The Harrowing
by Lee Kyle
Summary: The Volturi attempt to kill Renesmee exposes vampires to a determined hunter. Jane and Alice must discover new strengths inside themselves if their world is to be saved. Begins immediately after Breaking Dawn. Totally In Canon.
1. Chapter 1

**Payback's a B-**

Marcus stopped at the Rosetta Stone kiosk, picked up a box labeled "Learn Latin." Didyme had taught Marcus Etruscan. How many languages had he learned since then? How many had he forgotten? His childhood tongue was no longer spoken in Italy. Even he could not remember it.

"Master," one of his guard objected, "our flight is boarding."

"Give me your money," Marcus demanded.

His three Volturi escorts exchanged confused glances. The strongest withdrew a wad of bills, handed them over. Marcus purchased the language curriculum and stuffed the remaining currency in his pocket.

Marcus sensed long-dormant emotions in his comrades: hesitancy, uncertainty, sudden awareness. The fight with the Cullens had not gone as planned. Indeed, there hadn't really been a fight at all. And Chelsea was not present to reenforce their commitment.

Aro should have gathered them after the aborted battle. He should have debriefed them and encouraged them. He should have had Chelsea work her magic. But Aro had not been himself. The Volturi had scattered, fleeing to Tuscany with all speed on thirty different aircraft.

Marcus now hastened toward his gate, flanked by guards wondering why they were guarding Marcus at all. And why _was_ Marcus being guarded? What could he possibly need protection from? There were vampires who wanted the Volturi dead, yes. But why should Marcus care? Why should anyone care?

Abruptly Marcus halted. "I'm taking a later flight," he announced. "Proceed to Volterra without me."

"Master," their leader declared, "we must remain with you."

Marcus said nothing, instead focusing on the turmoil within his guards. They had to obey Marcus. They had to obey Aro. But really, why obey anybody? Marcus knew they longed to board the aircraft, to return to the familiar, to have their hearts and minds put at rest. Certainty and simplicity awaited them in the Volterran catacombs - the gifts of Chelsea, though they knew it not.

"Go home," Marcus commanded. He turned and walked away.

* * *

Marcus bought an espresso, then found a plastic chair in the middle of the terminal. He observed the endless crowds pass by as only a weary predator could, forcing himself to take sip after sip of the vile liquid. He wondered if humans really liked coffee, or if addiction simply compelled them. Marcus tolerated blood well enough, he supposed. An acquired taste.

_What is happening to me?_ he wondered. He had not wanted to kill Renesmee. Renesmee had not been killed. Should that not have made him happy? Content? Yet the outcome had left him disappointed. He didn't understand why.

There was one person on earth who might be able to help him. Marcus left his Starbucks and found an electronics boutique. He obtained a cell phone hastily even as long-dormant suspicions crawled through his body like maggots. He placed a call to Carlisle Cullen.

It took several minutes persuading before he got to the desired person.

"What do you want?" Edward demanded.

"If I have to ask," Marcus said, "you don't have the answer."

Edward waited several seconds before replying. "Aro killed Didyme," Edward informed him. "He's used Chelsea to keep you loyal ever since. I'm sorry."

Marcus nodded. Then he dropped the phone, rushed into the bathroom, and ate the first person he smelled.

* * *

Twelve hours later Marcus finally managed to finish the last drop of his coffee. The terminal was deserted except for police snipers, all keeping their scopes fixed on him while trying to avoid being detected themselves. To Marcus' enhanced senses they were painfully obvious, however. He closed his eyes and listened to hearts banging against armored vests. Marcus thought back to when that sound had once thrilled him, enlivened him, made him salivate. But Marie Antoinette had been right all along: nothing tastes.

A man and a woman passed through a door on the far side of the concourse and began approaching Marcus. Both appeared to be in their early forties, the woman slightly taller than the man. Their emotions toward each other presented a fascinating stew: respect, hate, servitude, devotion, lust, anger, pride. As they got closer Marcus found his attention drawn entirely toward the woman. Her body was too cold for a human. He breathed deeply through his nose and detected an odor he had not smelled since the founding of Rome.

Marcus permitted the couple to sit down. A rare fascination took hold of him.

"I'm Owen Wheeler," the man introduced himself. "This is Lucy DeRose."

"There were rumors," Marcus said, his attention fixed on Lucy. "Your kind is supposed to be extinct," he declared. "Extinct so very long ago."

"We know of no other kind," Owen noted. "Your thermal signature is consistent. But your heart isn't beating."

"A vampire with a beating heart," Marcus mused, staring at Lucy with longing. "So beautiful," he sighed. "So fragile." Then he thrust his left pinkie into his mouth and bit it off.

The pain shattered his stupor, jarring him awake. How could Aro have killed Didyme? Aro's sister. Marcus' love. Marcus' _mate_. He withdrew the finger from his mouth and handed it to Owen.

"You are novice," Marcus announced. "But I can change that. I can make you part of a larger world. A world you never dreamed of. The world of the Volturi."

Owen traded looks with Lucy. "What do you want in return?" he asked.

"A favor."

* * *

Marcus entered the Volterra catacomb two days later, video camera, microphone, and GPS tracking system all safely ensconced within his robe. Owen would have only moments to act. Marcus had made that clear. Once Chelsea recaptured him, once Aro took his hand, the Volturi would scatter.

He entered the sanctum, observed who was present. "Aro," he said for his listeners in the sky. "Caius. Felix. Alec. Chelsea." No Jane. That didn't matter, though. All that mattered was Aro. The vampire who had been his friend for three thousand years. The vampire who had condemned him to three thousand years of misery. The vampire who had killed his wife.

Yet already Marcus found his feelings shifting, weakening: Chelsea did not stand idle. "Take my hand, brother," Marcus demanded.

Aro hastened to Marcus. He just had time to grasp Marcus' undead flesh when a thermobaric warhead pierced into the underground chamber and discharged its contents.

Marcus' vampiric senses gave him several milliseconds to observe the cloud of fuel fill the catacomb. Micro-droplets of ethylene oxide flowed over and around Aro and Marcus. Aluminum nano-particles stuck to their robes. The expression on Aro's face had time to change. So did Marcus'. The weary widower closed his eyes. "Finally," he sighed.

The fuel-air mixture detonated, melting every Volturi leader into ash. Every Volturi leader save one.


	2. Chapter 2

**Jane**

Jane's denial crumbled as she circled a third time about the crater that had been her home. What besides an earthquake could possibly have caused such a catastrophe? Yet it was plain that this was no natural disaster. Only the Volturi fortress had been affected. The soldiers poking through the rubble spoke American English, not Italian. A noxious fuel residue, mixed with bitter dust, choked her nostrils. Would Alec's ashes smell different than everybody else's? Could her twin brother really be dead?

Jane ducked into an alley, tortured a random resident of Volterra, and shredded him into paste. She spent several minutes licking blood from the concrete, waiting for Volturi enforcers to approach. No enforcers came. The vampire reckoned she could glut herself on the entire town; no one would stop her. This, more than anything else, convinced her that the Volturi really were gone. Aro, Marcus, and Caius were gone. And most incomprehensibly, Alec was gone.

At one level, of course, there was no mystery to it. Jane and Alec had inflicted so much death for so long. Was it really strange that it had caught up with them at last? She recalled burning at the stake 1200 years ago. The flames had consumed more of her than Alec by the time Aro had rescued them. Perhaps that was why Alec had always been the gentle one, content to kill and feed. Jane, however, had been reborn from pain and through pain and to pain. She had made the world bear her suffering ever since.

It was Bella's fault. Jane did not understand how or why, but she knew it had to be Bella's fault. Surely it was no coincidence that three days after their failed attack on the Cullens, the Volturi had been consumed by unnatural fire. She could not imagine how the Cullens had done it, how Edward had hidden the plan from Aro. But those were just details - secondary, unimportant. The key fact was that before Bella had come along, the Cullens had not been a threat. That meant it was Bella who had killed Alec. Jane would now kill Bella. It was as simple as that.

A hidden dungeon waited in Vienna, a place where the Volturi survivors could gather and regroup. Jane decided to head there. Then a fresh swirl of confusion rooted her in place. Had serving the Volturi been the right choice? Although now that she considered it, she couldn't recall ever having actually decided to follow Aro. Why had she stuck with the Volturi for so many centuries? What did she want to do with her life?

These questions upset Jane deeply, not because they were bizarre in themselves, but because she didn't understand why she had never asked them before. What was happening to her? What _had_ happened? She had not slept since the Dark Ages. Why, then, did she suddenly feel like she was waking up? Who was she? What world was she living in, and why? And why had she waited until now to wonder?

Perhaps she should just slaughter the impudent human soldiers desecrating her brother's remains, create an army of newborns, and declare herself queen of Italy. That would certainly suppress all these miserable queries.

But Jane's training asserted itself: avoid detection. Above all else, avoid detection. She gave deeper consideration to the American soldiers, so out of place in Tuscany. She pondered the lingering airborne miasma. Eventually the terrible question formed itself: what if the Cullens had received outside help? What if _humans_ had been involved in the destruction of the Volturi?

The idea that the world could have changed that much pushed Jane to her breaking point. She gave the crater a parting grimace, turned her cape on Voltera, and fled toward Austria.


	3. Chapter 3

**Strategy**

Owen and Lucy observed a live feed from their offices in Langley. Navy Seals were picking through the rubble in Volterra. Owen was not impressed.

"They don't seem that tough," he noted. "Not as tough as Marcus claimed, anyway."

"We caught them by surprise in an enclosed space," Lucy said. "We had inside help. We can't expect such favorable circumstances in the future. And if what Marcus said is true, we have no hope of surprising the Olympia coven."

"Granted." Owen paused to consider his partner, wondering, as always, if this would be the day she decided to eat him. "What do you think, killing so many of your kind?"

Lucy folded her arms. "You call me undead," she accused, "but there is blood in my veins. _They_ are the monsters. Creatures of stone. I despise them."

"Hm," Owen murmured. "I wonder if the feeling is mutual." He stood from his desk and approached a digital projection of the world, possible locations of vampires highlighted in red. "The discovery of a new class is disturbing," he said. "I think of myself as an outside-the-box thinker. But Marcus blindsided me."

"Maybe I really will live forever," Lucy gloated.

Owen frowned. He had promised not to kill Lucy until she was the last vampire on earth. That essentially meant never, of course, for how could he ever be certain that she was the only one left? But if there were covens of another class scattered across the planet, then there was no way to imagine an end to the mission. The worst of it was that if there were two types, why not three? Ten? A hundred? How could he possibly hunt them all?

"Their powers seem excessive," Owen noted. "Not even vampires, really. More like superheroes on a restricted diet."

"They're not _alive_," Lucy protested, the disgust in her voice obvious.

"Are you? Their powers are excessive," Owen persisted. "It's more than they need to hunt their prey. What is the purpose of such strength? It has to be for fighting each other. Perhaps their only significant predator is other vampires. Maybe that's why they don't overwhelm the food supply: they're too busy killing each other. The question then," Owen mused, "is how to hunt them without becoming one myself."

"We need to capture one," Lucy said.

"Obviously." But how? Assuming the intel from Marcus was accurate, only a combat robot armed with laser weaponry could defeat the speed and agility of this bizarre class of stone vampires. Those machines were at least ten years from prototype, however. Owen had no intention of waiting that long.

"There's only one option, really," Owen concluded. "We have to get one to join us voluntarily."


	4. Chapter 4

**Recruitment**

Jane entered downtown Vienna three nights after Alec's death. She had fed twice during the journey, more out of frustration than out of hunger. Chelsea had manipulated her. She had bound Jane, enslaved her, refused to let her be her own person. The repulsiveness of it made Jane sick. She wished Aro were still alive, just so she could kill him herself.

She arrived in the neighborhood of Alsergrund, stopped at a strange smell. The odor confused, repelled, fascinated. Jane abandoned her quest for the Volturi hideout and began tracking, the scent striking an incomprehensible dread into her heart even as it drew her helplessly into a small park cluttered with metal tables.

A couple sat at one of these tables despite the late hour, a chess game between them. The man looked up as Jane approached and beckoned her in American English: "Ah, Jane," he said. "It's about time you got here. Join us." He returned to studying his chess pieces.

This greeting alarmed Jane, but not as much as the woman whose smell had drawn her here. The woman wasn't human! She couldn't be. Yet Jane could hear the woman's heart beating. Curiosity compelled Jane to walk up to the table, though she refrained from sitting in the extra chair that seemed to have been reserved for her.

"Should we visit Beethoven's house or Freud's office, Lucy?" the man asked his opponent as he moved one of his knights.

"Seeing as it's three o'clock in the morning," the woman replied, countering with a bishop, "I reckon we won't be visiting either, Owen."

"You still don't understand what I'm doing, do you?" Owen asked.

"No," Lucy confessed, frowning at the board.

"My plan," Owen said, "is that I don't have a plan. I cram five capital pieces into a section of your line and figure it from there. So there's no use guessing what I'm going to do. I don't know myself."

"Then you will lose," Jane commented, unable to resist.

"You'd think," Lucy said, refusing to look up. "Yet he always wins."

"Always?" Jane asked.

Now the non-human named Lucy _did_ turn and stare at Jane. "Always," she said.

Jane found herself completely nonplussed by Lucy's gaze. It made her feel like a little child, caught by her mother in the midst of some horrible transgression. It wasn't the discrepancy in their apparent ages - Jane looked thirteen, while Lucy seemed to be at least forty. It was this bizarre sense that Lucy knew her, weighed her, rejected her. And for some unfathomable reason, this rejection mattered. Oh, how it mattered!

Owen pulled a phone from his pocket and tapped the screen. "Five survivors from the Volturi guard have gathered in your safe house," he informed Jane.

A flash of light lit up the sky above the rooftops to the north, followed two seconds later by the thunderous sound of high explosives. Jane stared in horror at the cruel, confident smile on Owen's face. Her own expression hardened. "Pain," she pronounced.

Owen collapsed on the ground, writhing and screaming. Jane walked around him slowly, keeping her attention fixed on Lucy. The woman stayed in her seat, hands folded in her lap, seemingly unconcerned.

Jane halted the torture. Owen took almost a minute to catch his breath. Then he rolled onto his hands and knees, spit out a mouthful of blood, crawled to his chair, and resumed his place. "Still my move," he said.

Jane began wondering if she had lost her mind. How could the pain not affect this impudent human? Except it _had_ affected him. The man had torn apart the night with his cries; likely only the sirens now sounding throughout the city had prevented Owen's agony from drawing attention. But with the pain over it was like he...didn't care. No shock. No fear that Jane would do it again. If anything, the incomprehensible man merely looked weary, an old soul marching through some obligatory routine. He moved his queen. "Check," he said.

"Who _are_ you?" Jane finally asked.

"I'm the man who just saved your life," Owen noted. "I burn the Volturi to nothingness in that stupid Italian catacomb. What do your survivors do? Hole up in another underground space. Biggest group of idiot vampires I've ever seen. Darwin awards for everybody."

Fresh fury surged though Jane. How _dare_ this human speak to her with such disrespect! Didn't he realize how easily Jane could kill them both? Except he _did_ know. Somehow, someway, he seemed to know all the secrets Aro had tried so hard to hide. Owen knew he was defenseless, helpless, hopeless. He knew. _And he didn't care_. The absence of fear, of concern, left Jane completely flummoxed. She pulled up her chair and sat down.

"Edward Cullen entered the Volturi fortress last year," Owen observed. "While there he read Aro's mind. He did the same again during your recent confrontation in Washington. The information Edward acquired during those encounters led directly to the Volturi's destruction. Aro should have seen it coming, but he didn't. He was a fool."

"Aro ruled the world for fifteen hundred years," Jane objected.

"And look where it got him." Owen leaned toward Jane, invading her space. Jane couldn't help herself: she cast a nervous glance to her right, wondering what Lucy thought. The woman remained unmoved.

"Tell me," Owen challenged, "when Aro heard that the Cullens had created an immortal child, did it occur to his supposedly brilliant mind to just _send Carlisle a text and ask what was going on?_ And once he committed to battle, did Aro think to scope the enemy forces with a UAV? How about bringing a hypersonic cruise missile to the fight? A grenade launcher with white phosphorous rounds? A tactical nuke?"

Jane wanted to object, but what could she say? Apparently Owen had succeeded where myriad vampires had failed: he had killed Aro. He had also killed Alec. That's what Jane needed to focus on. Owen needed to pay for that. Except what was any human, really? What was _this_ human? Just some pawn used by the Cullens, even if he didn't realize it.

"Edward helped you kill Aro," Jane said, trying to redirect the conversation. "Now Aro is dead. Edward can be eliminated."

"I intend to kill all the Cullens," Owen announced, "but Bella especially. She _chose_ to become a vampire. That makes her a traitor. I want her head on a platter."

"So do what you did to Volterra."

"A reasonable suggestion," Owen replied. He pulled out a laptop and opened it to reveal a satellite image of a house surrounded by trees. "The Cullen residence," he said. "Currently deserted. When they heard about the Volturi they scattered. Still, they're not hard to locate. GPS trackers in their cars and cell phones. Distinctive thermal signatures when they move in the open. But the fact that I can follow them doesn't matter, and you know why."

"Alice," Jane said.

"Alice," Owen agreed. "From what I've been told, if I actually decide to make a move on the Cullens, Alice will see it and they will compensate. Worse yet, they might go to ground and disappear for real."

"Her gift has limits," Jane explained. "That's what Aro said, anyway. She can only see so much. And her visions have gaps. She can see humans and vampires, but she can't see werewolves. She can't see Renesmee."

"Is that right?" Owen pondered, glancing at Lucy. "I wonder if she can see you."

Jane's eyes went wide. "You're a shadow-feeder?" she demanded, incredulous. "You can't be. You don't exist anymore."

"If only we could know for certain," Lucy said, ignoring Jane. "If Alice can't see my decisions, that might make for a short fight."

"Perhaps," Owen granted. "But the details of her gift are unclear. She's certainly managed to save her coven on more than one occasion, and in the face of imposing odds, too. We must proceed with caution, even if I do put you in charge." He turned back to Jane. "I don't know who you have the biggest grudge against. Bella, perhaps. It doesn't matter. Right now Alice has to be our primary target."

"Excuse me?" Jane asked, incredulous. "You think I'm going to _help_ you? You killed Alec!"

"That's right. And one day I'll kill you. But Cullens first. The traitor, especially."

Owen's reckless confidence stunned Jane. Was the man crazy? Did he have a death wish? Was that why the pain had failed to instill fear, or even respect? Maybe he was _trying_ to get Jane to bite his head off. Either way, the idea of working with a human offended her elitist sensibilities. "I have served the mightiest vampire on earth for over a thousand..."

"Yes, yes," Owen interrupted. "Aro the great. Aro the invincible. Let me ask you something, Jane. Vamps are so powerful. We humans are so weak. Why is it, then, that for thirty years every time I go up against a vampire, it's the vamp that always ends up dead? Well," he paused, reaching out and caressing Lucy's hand, "all except one. Yes," he continued, standing up, "compared to you I _am_ a weak, piddly nothing. So why do I win? Why do I _always_ win? I'll tell you my secret, Jane: I win _because_ I'm weak."

"That's absurd," Jane protested.

Owen smiled. "What have you ever had to _work_ for, Jane? You were born with a latent mental ability. Aro's bite turned you into a vampire. So now you have these amazing powers. Whoop-De-Do. Like I'm supposed to be impressed? What's so special about powers you didn't have to work for? What you have you have as a result of outside forces. You didn't make yourself this way, so it doesn't count. I, on the other hand, have to work at everything. That's what makes me better than you."

Jane would not allow this. "I endured the venom," she said.

"Three days pain is not a high enough cost. You got something for nothing, Jane, and the universe won't permit it. Entropy's a b-. You've got to pay up, same as the rest of us."

"I'm stronger than you," she maintained.

"So's a bear. So's a tractor. So's a hellfire missile. Who cares? None of these things _chose_ to be strong. None of these things _made_ itself strong. You're like a three-year-old with a gun, Jane. You have this incredible power put into your hand, but you don't understand it. Maybe you can slaughter everyone. That doesn't change the fact you're surrounded by people smarter than you.

"Why do you think humans still run this planet?" he continued. "Your species is lazy. Lazy between the ears. How could you not know that in the modern world, lurking in a dungeon is asking to die? I mean, _seriously_ Jane? Any twelve-year-old with a smart phone could have told you as much. But even after Volterra, you still don't know what a bunker-buster JDAM is, do you? _Do_ you? Pathetic."

"If you want me to help you," Jane asked, "why do you speak to me like this?"

"Because I want you to join me voluntarily," Owen said. "Not through lies, or fear, or manipulation. Not even so that you can get revenge. I want you to join me because I can give you something you've never had: a genuine sense of identity."

Jane tried to object to this, but Owen didn't give her a chance.

"Yes, I know," Owen said. "You've led the Volturi guard for a thousand years. But you didn't choose that. It was chosen for you. Now you have to make a decision, the first real decision of your life: what are you going to live for? And you can't wait until Bella is dead to ask. There's more to life than vengeance. There's more to life than pleasure and survival, or the three of us might as well just die right here and now. I will help you discover your purpose, your _telos_, your end - the reason you exist."

"I want to make the Cullens suffer," Jane said. "That's all I care about."

"Then you're of no use to me," Owen replied. "I don't want angry helpers. I want _interesting_ helpers. There's nothing interesting about anger. Is there more to you than rage and pain? Or at the very least, are you _capable_ of more than that?

"And let's get something perfectly clear: I don't need you. I spared you because I want to know if stone vampires _can_ change. Show me a genuine alteration in what drives you. Become something more than an animal. Get to the point where vengeance is no longer what you want most - and then I will give it to you."

Jane's heart burned with the improbability of it all. Could a human possibly do something good for her? Why would a human even care? Yet Aro had never spoken to her like this, had never expressed the least interest in her inner life. She had been a useful tool, nothing more. Surely that was how this man thought of her as well. But he was honest about it! Did that mean something? Anything? Everything? How embarrassing it was not to know.

"What do you want?" she finally asked.

"I want to train you," Owen said. "Let me remake you, and you will become smart - smarter than you ever dreamed possible. You will own your greatest weakness and learn how to make it a strength. You will comprehend your enemy's greatest strength and turn it into the very weakness that destroys her. You will become the mightiest vampire the world has ever seen. And in the midst of it all, somehow, someway, you will figure out why you exist.

"And I promise you this, Jane: only when you've discovered your purpose, only when you've internalized in your precious, undead bones _why_ you're here - I promise it's only then that will I kill you."


	5. Chapter 5

**Alice**

There was a price to pay for seeing the future. Alice concealed this from her family, of course, though Edward knew. How many visions could a girl have before she started losing touch with reality? And the constant insistence that she use her gift only made it worse. But she loved her family, and they needed her. They needed her to save them, over and over again.

There was a price to pay for seeing the future. Thus this Seattle shopping trip with Bella. For a distinctive feature of Alice's visions was that they were often weak on _details_, the accessories and knick-knacks that fleshed out the background of everyday life. Did fashion and decorating possess any true abiding value? Alice didn't know. She didn't care. What mattered was that when she was trying on clothes, Alice felt connected to the present. To the _now_. Each new outfit kept her sane for another day.

Alice and Bella entered Pacific Place one month after the inexplicable destruction of the Volturi. The Cullens had gone mobile in response to the attack, fearing the worst. But whatever had happened to the Volturi seemed to have nothing to with the Cullens, and Alice saw no danger in their future. The family had finally regathered in Forks, insistent as ever that Alice protect them. So she observed the future constantly, and she shopped even more. Through it all she hoped most earnestly that she never had a vision of herself in a changing room. For on the day that happened, she felt certain she would lose her mind.

After an hour in Macy's she and Bella passed into the center of the mall. Alice stopped. "Do you smell that?" she asked.

"Yes," Bella said. "What is it?"

"I don't know. It's disturbing, whatever it is."

"We should leave," Bella urged, even as she joined Alice in pursuing the source of the mystery.

Alice agreed with Bella: they should leave. But she couldn't help herself. She hadn't seen this moment in any vision. She needed to know why. Alice tracked the scent to a couple seated in a crowded eating area. It was the woman who was producing the bizarre smell. She attracted and repelled Alice in a new, unsettling way. What _was_ the woman? Why was she here? Why did she stare at Alice as though she already knew her?

It was the woman's partner, however, who spoke first. "Oh, my, Lucy," he said. "This is really just too rich. Like Christmas in March. Alice and Bella, join us, please." He gestured grandly toward two empty chairs.

"Alice?" Bella inquired, her face urgent and afraid. "Let's go."

"Go if you want," the man said. "I'm certainly not stopping you. But understand this: I'm giving you a chance I didn't give the Volturi, what with your special diet and all. Walk away from this meeting, however, and the gloves come off. I'll assume you're as big a threat as they were, and respond accordingly."

Alice sat down abruptly and forced Bella to join them. "If it's vampires eating people you want to stop," she said, "then you were a fool to kill Aro. He was the one keeping us from multiplying excessively."

"She's got a point, Owen," Lucy said, opening a laptop and turning it so Alice and Bella could see the screen.

"Yes," Owen agreed. "It seems there's a job opening at the top of the food chain." He reached around and pointed to the display. "Note the unusual thermal signatures in this section of the Amazon. Those are your friends, Zafrina and company. Observe the crosshairs. That's a laser targeting system for terminal guidance. In case you're not smart enough to realize it, that means I have an agent on the ground who was able to locate Zafrina while remaining undetected herself. The bomb will guide on..." The display blazed with light. Owen pondered the whited-out screen silently for several seconds, then closed the lid and sighed. "And that, my dear Alice, is three less vampires in the world."

Alice glanced at Bella, who was staring at Owen coldly. "Maybe we should kill them," Bella suggested.

"Sweet little mama bear," Owen replied. "Slay us if you must. You certainly won't have any trouble doing so: two stone vamps against a human and a shadow-feeder. You don't even have to worry about Volturi retaliation for acting in a public place. So come on, my dear, newborn Bella: let me be the first human you kill. Make clear to the world that your coven is no different than any other. Monsters. Murderers. Undead filth worthy of summary execution."

Alice glowered, but she put a hand on Bella's arm, urging her to maintain control. Could this human really have just killed Zafrina? Was that even possible? And what did it mean that she had foreseen none of these events? The improbability of it all threatened to overwhelm her. Humans were a source of home decor, not danger. Yet there was no denying the information possessed by this inexplicable human. How could he know so much about them? It was especially disturbing that he seemed so much more interested in Alice than in Bella. Aro had displayed the same sort of focus.

Owen gave Alice a condescending smile. "Aro's singular mission was to keep your kind a secret," he said. "In that mission he spectacularly failed. My agency will now hunt stone vampires so mercilessly, you'll soon find yourself longing with nostalgia for the days of the Volturi.

"But there's nothing you can do about that," Owen continued. "What you _can_ do is work to save your family. My understanding is that the Olympia coven feeds exclusively on animal blood, an option that my poor Lucy, alas, does not have. I also understand that avoiding human blood is quite difficult for you. This self-denial intrigues me. I'm willing to keep an open mind. Convince me not to wipe you out."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Alice challenged bitterly. "It's obvious you hate us."

"You're going to take an offer to Carlisle," Owen replied. "And for your sake, you better hope he accepts it."


	6. Chapter 6

**All Offers Can Be Refused**

Owen was standing before his digital map of the world when Lucy led Carlisle Cullen into the office. She gave Owen a quick nod and withdrew the way she had come, closing the door behind her.

Owen pointed to a cluster of three dots in Northern Virginia. "One of the white dots is you," Owen explained. "The red dot's Lucy."

Carlisle approached the giant monitor, but said nothing.

"You were a hunter," Owen remarked. "White dots, red dots. Should I have other colors on my map? Are there more than two kinds of vampires?"

"I don't know," Carlisle replied. "It was never common knowledge that there were shape-shifters distinct from werewolves. Yet those shape-shifters exist."

Owen turned to face Carlisle. The vampire was every bit as handsome and composed as Owen had been led to expect. "If I understand the inclinations of your old friend," Owen said, "if Aro had my problem he would seek someone with the power to sense supernatural creatures. He would use that person's ability to discover how many types of vampires there are in the world. Am I right?"

"Probably."

"Then that's where you begin in understanding me, Dr. Cullen. I have no desire to find a 'power' that will solve my problem. Can I answer my question _without_ a power? That's the real issue in my mind. Weak, ignorant, groping in the dark - can I still somehow determine if there are other types of vampires? That's what will make me a real hunter."

"I've known plenty of hunters," Carlisle replied. "It's no life worth living, no matter how good you are at it."

"Oh, I'm miserable enough," Owen granted. "A hunter pursues a tiger into the jungle. The man tracks the tiger, lives with the tiger, worships the tiger. He becomes one with the tiger, and loves it even as he cuts out its heart. When the tiger dies, the hunter dies with it. Why, then, does he kill it? _Because it is a tiger._"

"That's not why I hunted."

Owen pondered this for a moment. "They say the Roundheads were right but repulsive," he observed. "Is that a fair summary of your father?"

"I suppose."

"It is not a fair summary of me. I am repulsive, but I'm not right. Meaning I'm no better than my prey, and I know it. Proud, arrogant, empty, yes. But not self-righteous. I'm not a good man killing bad vampires. I'm a bad man killing bad vampires."

"What if some vampires aren't bad?"

"You'd think that would be the key question," Owen said, moving toward his desk. "But it's not. If humans possess an innate right to life, it certainly doesn't spring from the goodness of our hearts. We don't deserve to live because we're good. We deserve to live even though we're not. It is a foundational element of the human condition. And as you're not human..." Owen shrugged and sat down.

"Let's assume what you're saying is true," Carlisle replied, taking a chair opposite Owen. "A right to life is part of being human. It does not automatically follow that humans are the only creatures to possess such a right."

Owen's eyes sparkled. "Am I dreaming, or have I finally met a vampire with some smattering of intelligence? Where should I set the bar, Dr. Cullen? Must I make you prove that vampires also have a right to life before I decide to spare the Olympic Coven? That could be a pretty high bar to reach. And given that humans are your natural food source, I'd have to think the whole effort would contain some sort of wicked-nasty self-contradiction."

"I do think we have a right to life," Carlisle maintained, "or I'd not have created my family in the first place. And we love each other deeply, even if you think that's not possible."

"Oh, I have no doubt vampires can love. Be assured of that. But nazis love, too. We still do right when we kill them."

Owen pulled out a protein bar and began nibbling it, rocking in his swivel chair ever so slightly. He sipped from a water bottle. "I think I like you, Dr. Cullen. It's a pity we have to be enemies. I feel I could learn so much from you."

"It is my desire that we be friends, not enemies."

"Perhaps. Perhaps for now. But I'll let you in on a little secret: I see the future much better than your daughter Alice does. Let me tell what I see. I see a future in which biometric sensors are so advanced and so ubiquitous that vampires will no longer be able to mix in human society. I see a future with combat machines so fast and so lethal that stone vampires become easy kills. Most importantly, I see a future in which vampires realize what the future is going to look like, and decide to do something to prevent that future.

"Do you understand what I'm saying, Dr. Cullen? At the current rate of technological progress, vampires will be wiped out within the next two hundred years. Vampires will realize this within fifty years. And then vampires will try to halt mankind's technological progress before it's too late. That means in about fifty years, your species is going to try to destroy modern civilization. You'll hit the human race with some apocalypse that wipes out three quarters of the world's population and puts our technology back to the 1700's. You'll wait four hundred years, and you'll do it again. And you'll keep doing it, cycle after cycle, because it'll be the only way your species can survive.

"So instead of talking about whether or not vampires have a right to life, let's talk about something much more fundamental. Will vampires allow human technology to advance to the point where we can effortlessly identify and eliminate every member of your species at the moment of our choosing? Or will you do whatever you have to to keep from ending up in such vulnerable, helpless circumstances?"

Owen stopped to observe Carlisle's reaction. He could tell this little speech had taken his guest aback, that although the doctor might understand exponential growth in a petri dish, he had never applied that understanding to the accelerating growth of humanity's scientific knowledge. He had never grasped what that exponential function meant for the future of his kind.

Owen had to give Carlisle credit, though. Based upon his expressions, the doctor was putting the pieces together in an awful hurry. Owen imagined Carlisle drawing the curve in his mind: man's technology developing ever more quickly till, without even trying to, man got himself to the point where he need never fear a vampire again. Vampires had to stop that growth curve while they still could. And they had to do it soon.

"Do vampires have a right to life?" Owen asked. "Do humans have a right to grow our tech base till we seem like gods, even to you? This is what you have to do, Dr. Cullen, if you want your family to live. You have to help secure mankind's technological ascendency. You have to help us get to the point where you can no longer hurt us. Choose sides with humanity, Doctor, against your own kind, and I will treat you like a human being."

"How do I do that?"

Owen produced a sheaf of papers and passed them to Carlisle. "I understand you're the treaty-making sort," Owen said. "Here are my terms. The Olympic Coven must maintain its exclusively animal diet. It must submit to permanent government monitoring. No more humans may be turned, not for any reason. You will initiate and oversee a research project tasked with eliminating venom from vampires, the success of which would enable us to spay/neuter vampires and prevent them from reproducing. Your coven will also assist my agency in the hunting of all remaining vampires on earth. Each vampire will be given the choice of entering into this treaty, or being killed for persistence in its human diet."

"Is that all?" Carlisle asked, his voice grim.

"Probably not. If I'm going to let the most powerful coven on earth survive, Dr. Cullen, I've got to feel it in my bones. It's got to feel appropriate, fitting, sensible. In the dark hours of the night, when the ghosts haunt me, I have to feel I'm doing the proper thing to. Make it click inside me so completely that you alive actually helps me sleep better."

"How do I do that?"

"I have no idea. That's part of the challenge. You've got to convince me you've joined the human side, certainly. But you've got to do more. You've got to make your survival _matter_ to me. And _you_ have to figure out how to do it."

"Eliminating our venom may not be possible," Carlisle said.

"You don't need it to hunt."

"It's not that. The substance is integral to our physiology."

"Well, that's a problem," Owen said. "Even if your coven never eats a human, the mere fact that you're capable of producing others who might makes you a threat. I have to know your family will never create another vampire. And as I understand it, you're the key offender in this regard. Perhaps I'm asking more than you're capable of. Perhaps the only way this ends is with all of us dead."

"You're not really giving me a choice," Carlisle complained.

"There you are mistaken, Doctor. Motives and reasons undergird every choice, or it wouldn't be a real choice. I'm giving you strong incentives to make the choice I want you to make. So what? It's still a real choice you are making. Plenty of other vampires in the same circumstances would make different choices. Some would have eaten me by now. Some would never have come at all. But here you are, sitting in my office, refraining from killing me no matter how severely I goad you." Owen rose and extended his hand.

Carlisle hesitated for a moment, then shook. Lucy reentered the office.

"You're an intriguing figure, Dr. Cullen," Owen said, "a trait that helps you more than you realize. Keep intriguing me and we'll see where this goes. I hate killing interesting people."


	7. Chapter 7

**How to Train Your Vampire**

Jane halted her MRAP fifty meters from an isolated Danish farmhouse and gave her computer screens a final check. A stealth UAV showed Makenna and Charles were still inside the building. Four F-16's circled off the coast, waiting to deliver any munitions Jane might decide to call in. Jane grabbed the tablet controlling her vehicle's 90-kilowatt Firestrike mount and stepped out onto the black Baltic soil.

The nomads she hoped to capture surely had heard her truck pull up. Automotive sounds did not normally attract much attention from Jane's kind, but these were not normal times. Vampires were disappearing all over the world, and no vampire understood why. Except for Jane, of course. She paused long enough to double-check the sync between the truck's primary weapon and the heads-up display in her helmet. Then she began walking toward the front door, her combat boots crunching softly in the gravel.

Seizing isolated nomads these last ten weeks had been easy. Two nomads together was a different matter. Jane's gift would enable her to immobilize Charles, of course. But that would leave Makenna free to attack, and Jane was useless in close combat.

She halted ten meters from the porch and waited for Charles. "What do you want?" he eventually demanded from the home's interior. Then he poked his head out. "Jane? Is that you? We thought the Volturi were dead."

"They _are_ dead," Jane replied, momentarily surprised the man could recognize her despite all the gear she was wearing. "Here's my problem," she explained. "I've been tasked with imprisoning both of you at the Vampire Detention Facility in Langley, Virginia. But I'm not sure how I can get both of you there safely. I'm reckoning I'll probably have to kill one of you and take back the survivor. That'll make it harder for me to meet my quota, though. And it'll do nothing to convince my boss I have a brain. So it would be great if you could think of a better idea."

"Maybe we'll just run away."

Jane smiled. "Try," she said.

Charles stayed where he was. Jane knew it was her Volturi reputation that held the terrified vampire in place, the dread she had built through centuries of enforcing Aro's will. It was annoying that Owen considered the hard-earned reputation worthless.

Makenna came around the far corner of the house. She snarled and charged. "No!" Charles shouted, but then he leapt from the doorway to support his mate.

Jane shrugged. Using the interface in her helmet she ordered the targeting computer in the MRAP to prioritize the female attacker and engage. Flames burst from Makenna's abdomen; her body fell to the ground in two blazing pieces. "Pain," Jane pronounced, engulfing Charles in mental fire. He collapsed at her feet.

Jane let Charles writhe for a while as she pondered Makenna's burning form. _Maybe I don't have a brain_, she thought. _But I do have a kick-ass laser cannon._

* * *

A nice thing about vampire prisoners was that they required...nothing. The Vampire Detention Facility in Langley consisted of a 25-meter wide circular plate of polished tungsten-carbide. The eight prisoners could stand or sit on this metal surface as they saw fit. There were no walls or roofs, much less bars or plumbing. Flat, open grassland stretched a mile in every direction. Laser mounts on the distant perimeter kept the prisoners on the plate. The ashes of the two who had attempted to run had long since washed away in the spring rains.

Jane delivered Charles to the plate on May 25, raising the prisoner count to nine. They were a motley crew for the most part, loners now forced to endure membership in what Owen had dubbed the "WC Coven" in honor of the chemical formula for tungsten-carbide. Jane, however, simply called them "Platers." She noticed their eyes were starting to change under the steady diet of deer. That couldn't be helping their mood. At least Jane still looked like a predator: she got all the bags of donated blood she wanted.

To Jane's knowledge none of the Platers had special abilities. Nevertheless, one member of the group did qualify as special: a striking blonde vampire named George. Like Jane, he had his origins in the murk of medieval England. Like Jane, he was cunning, cruel, and brash. She had been fortunate to capture him in the early days of the purge, before word had gone out and the smarter vampires had become more cautious.

"Has it ever occurred to you," George challenged, "that one day they might just throw you in here with us? That could be a bad day for you."

Jane kept a ten-meter cushion between herself and the edge of the plate: room for the lasers to work in case anyone was foolish enough to step onto the grass.

"I like the hazel eyes," Jane replied. "George the gerbil."

The captive's nostrils flared, but he stayed on the metal.

"What's it like serving on a human leash, Jane?"

"It's a long leash. And they don't control my thoughts."

"Indeed. Then enlighten us, Jane. Tell us what you're thinking."

"The human hunting us, Owen Wheeler - he's killed four shadow-feeders since 1984. That's all he's focused on. But now suddenly he knows about us, and it's caused him to reconsider everything. The shadow-feeders are animalistic. They don't engage in long-term thinking, they never interact with each other. Sunlight kills them, bullets kill them. In Owen's words, they don't present a 'strategic threat.'

"He thinks our kind's totally different. He thinks a day's coming when we figure out how dangerous their technology is becoming. He thinks we'll try to destroy all their progress, put them back to horses and subsistence farming. He calls it a war between science fiction and fantasy. Science fiction is winning, he says. He wants to make sure it keeps winning."

George smirked. "He's so afraid we're going to wake up and notice their toys." He pointed at the laser batteries in the distance. "I wonder if his prophecy is self-fulfilling. In trying to keep it from happening, hasn't he made it happen? I never knew what an energy weapon was before. I sure as hell know what one is now."

"True," Jane acknowledged. "But my guess is he'll kill you when he's finished experimenting on you."

"He hasn't done experiments. All they do is collect venom samples."

"He wants to render our bite venom-less," Jane explained. "Keep us from reproducing."

"Sounds like the logical response is to create a few million newborns. That should knock the science fiction lovers on their ass. Why not? Secret's out. Time to switch strategies while we still can. Spring us out of here, Jane. Our very survival's at stake."

Jane sighed, looked north toward Owen's headquarters. "I think he's daring me to do exactly that," she said.

"Why?"

"Everything's part of the training, part of the test. I don't understand him. What he's doing. He's so much smarter than Aro. I'd say he has listening devices in place, that he's listening to our conversation. But why bother? He's already figured out everything we're going to say to each other. In fact, he's counting on it."

"My dear Jane! Bested by a human."

"You haven't met him. He never lies, George. It's unsettling. How do you think I know so much? But that's not the worst of it. He wants to make _me_ smart. Not just smarter than you or Aro. Smarter than _him_. He wants me to become smarter than _him_. How does that make sense, George? And what will it mean when I actually _do_ understand it?"

* * *

Lucy arrived in the training hall about an hour after sunset. Jane wondered what Lucy did during daylight hours. Did she sleep in a coffin? Catch up on email? Jane was afraid to ask. Something about the shadow-feeder completely freaked her out. So pink and vulnerable, at least compared to a real vampire - yet there was no way Jane was going to risk touching that soft, undead flesh.

Lucy picked up a tablet and began typing. Her words appeared on a large wall screen: Cullen Strengths. "List them," Lucy said.

"Bella can shield a group against mental abilities," Jane began, "which proved decisive in the final confrontation with the Volturi. Edward reads minds, Jasper affects emotions, Alice sees visions of the future. The Cullens are strongly devoted to each other. They also exercise a useful alliance with the local tribe of shape-shifters. They are perhaps more comfortable with modern technology than many of our kind. They have cultivated a worldwide network of friends, although that network is now in a state of disintegration. They possess extensive financial resources, although these funds are easy to track."

"The trick," Lucy replied, "is to turn these strengths into weaknesses. If and when we attack the Cullens, we want to make _their_ strengths the key to _our_ victory. In other words, we end up winning _because_ Bella shields, and Edward reads minds, and Alice sees the future."

"How do we do that?"

"Well, for starters they are probably overly dependent on their gifts. They could develop other early warning systems, for example, but because they have Alice they haven't done so. It's like how Aro never taught you what to do if your power was blocked. If we can neutralize their powers, they may not know what to do. But I want more than that. I want their powers working fine - and biting them in the ass."

Lucy put a lot of feeling into this final statement, which confused Jane. What did this shadow-feeder have against the Cullens? Or had she simply internalized Owen's quest so completely that his hates had become her own?

"Why do we exist?" Jane blurted, immediately afraid Lucy would laugh at her. But Lucy's expression became reflective, not mocking.

"That we ask the question at all indicates we are not animals," Lucy began, "so there must be more to our lives than sex and survival. And our core purpose can't be hunting vampires, for that would be to say we exist to destroy ourselves. Given that none of us was born this way, I think the logical starting point is to ask why _humans_ exist, and then decide if our change in ontological status has produced a corresponding teleological change. Do we still exist for the same end as man, or is our purpose now fundamentally different?"

This response took Jane aback. English-speaking vampires rarely used big words. She couldn't help herself. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I was a scientist. A molecular biologist, back during the discipline's infancy. I try to keep up, but it's hard: there's so much more to know these days. And Owen keeps me busy."

"Why do you serve him?"

Lucy smiled. "There's a lot of water under that bridge. He hunted me many years. Maybe we just got so used to our lives being intertwined, we couldn't imagine life without each other."

"Do you love him?"

Lucy's face hardened. "Sharing his bed doesn't mean I love him."

"But..."

"He understands me," Lucy said. "That may not sound like much, but there's no one else on earth who does. He understands me, and he accepts me. There comes a point when that matters almost as much as love. And he's put me in charge of this mission, which means he respects me, too. Put all that together and it's enough."

"Enough for what?"

The shadow-feeder closed her eyes and shook her head.

"But he's going to kill you," Jane declared.

A tear ran down Lucy's cheek. She turned and fled from the room.

As Jane watched her leave, she couldn't help asking yet another basic question: _What the hell is going on around here?_

* * *

Jane walked down a poorly lit alley known to be frequented by MS-13 gang members. She wore the outfit and expression of a runaway. Her eyes were black with hunger, so no need for contact lens. Thirst burned her throat, threatening to drive her mad. Jane wondered if she had been this desperate for blood since her year as a newborn. A painful precondition for the night's test: kill, but don't feed.

Jane settled onto the pavement and waited. By the time three heavily tattooed men appeared with a thought to kidnap her, the moans rising from her chest were not fake. How could she possibly slay without eating? The smell of their blood would shatter her restraint. She tried to imagine some sort of blunt force trauma that would break bones but leave skin intact.

A scream echoed off the walls, causing the men to look over their shoulders in panic. Then they, too, screamed. A woman was descending out of the sky - if she could be called a woman. She was unclothed from the waist up, flying by means of fearsome wings that extended from her back. Jane's vampiric senses enabled her to note the creature's mottled and sickly face, the claws extending from fingers and toes, and the eager yellow light that shone from her eyes. Then the monster pounced.

Jane had witnessed feeding frenzies before, but not like this. The shadow-feeder rent and tore and gored, her insane cries of lust and rage shattering the night. Jane pressed herself against a brick wall, terrified, as the old-school vampire settled on the body in the fewest pieces and began drinking.

The smell threatened to overwhelm Jane. This thirst consuming her insides - this was what being on the receiving end of her ability must feel like to others. She thought of running, but dared not draw attention to herself.

The shadow-feeder's appearance reverted to human form, though her wings remained. She stood up and began approaching Jane slowly, calmly, blood dripping from her arms and face. Then the shadow-feeder smiled, and Jane recognized Lucy.

Jane had never wanted to use her power so badly. She would immobilize Lucy and run. She _had_ to. Owen couldn't expect her to just stand here while a blood-drenched angel of death forced its undead stench into her personal space. Except that _was_ what Owen expected. And Jane realized that this was the real test - not if she could keep from eating random humans, but if she could keep from paining her personal tutor.

Lucy got within six inches of Jane and pressed a finger to the stone vampire's lips. Jane squeezed her eyes and started shaking. Her thoughts drifted back to burning at the stake: this was the same combination of agony and beauty and horror and ecstasy. Her mind began to splinter.

A whisper broke into her delirium: "What is the Cullens' greatest power?"

"Self-control," Jane croaked.

"What does it mean?" the whisper demanded.

And at last Jane _did_ understand what it meant: the Cullens were unbeatable.


	8. Chapter 8

**Family Meeting**

The Cullens ran as a group through the deep forest, Alice leading the way. Carlisle had just returned after six months in Virginia. The family was eager to hear his report. Likely the ubiquitous government satellites tracked their movements. But at least in the wild they could have a genuinely private conversation. A hundred miles from Forks they separated for an hour to feed, then regathered in the thickest growth they could find.

Carlisle's time away had been a nightmare for Alice. So much of the future had become obscured. And every path she _could_ see ended in eight dead Cullens - or worse. Much worse. The visions had also taken a toll on Edward, whose mind saw everything Alice saw. And Jasper was exhausting himself trying to keep up Alice's spirits - an unusual task given how cheerful she normally was. But now, at last, Carlisle was home. The leader of their family was a lifeline, a light, a sure foundation. He would know what they should do.

"I knew a number of hunters before I was turned," Carlisle began, "and I've interacted with several more in the centuries since then. This Owen Wheeler isn't like any of them. His motives are complicated and obscure. In some ways he just hates us and wants us exterminated. But he's also fascinated by our kind. I don't think he can really imagine a world in which we no longer exist. That's where our opportunity lies, for although his plans are logical, his most basic decisions seem based on emotion. If we can get him to _feel_ what we feel, I think he will spare us."

"I want to meet him," Edward said.

"There's no way he will let you near him," Carlisle replied, "and if you ever did get close enough to hear his thoughts, I'm pretty confident he would kill you. He knows a lot about you, Edward. I'm guessing that after Marcus talked to you, he made some sort of arrangement with Owen. That's the only explanation I can come up with for how he knows so much about us, and for how he was able to kill the Volturi."

"You're really certain it was him?" Emmett asked.

Carlisle nodded. "I am certain. And he hasn't stopped. The amount of venom delivered to my lab likely means he is holding a number of vampires prisoner. Pieces of newborns also keep coming."

"How could he hold vampires captive?" Bella asked, her voice incredulous.

"I think he has at least one of our kind helping him," Carlisle answered.

"Jane," Edward said, exchanging a look with Alice.

"I keep seeing images of her," Alice explained. "She seems bound up with our future, although I can't tell how."

Carlisle frowned. "A Volturi survivor would explain a great deal. But why would she help him? The shadow-feeder helps him, too. I wish we could get you near him, Edward. It would be so helpful to know what he's thinking."

"But you've already figured out what he's thinking," Esme suggested.

"Partially. He has something personal against Bella. Considers her a traitor for choosing to become one of us. But Bella's not his focus. His absolute priority is humans not getting eaten. His assistant, Lucy - she can only consume human blood. It can't be banked, either. They have to get her fresh donations. It's her kind Owen's used to hunting. The shadow-feeders have to eat humans, so his goal has always been extermination.

"But our kind can eat animals, and some of us do. He seems especially impressed with me, frankly. He says I'm too interesting to kill. I can still create new vampires, however - vampires who might choose to feed on humans. He wants to guarantee that we don't reproduce, or at least that our offspring will only consume animals. That's why he's had me researching venom. I finally convinced him that rendering our bite venom-less is not possible. Now he's looking for other options."

"I try to watch him," Alice said. "It's impossible. It must be Lucy."

"She's part of it," Carlisle granted. "But part of it is him. He hasn't made any decisions. He doesn't know what he's going to do. I think he's hoping we'll make up his mind for him. There are a number of choices we could make that would effectively spare him the trouble of making a decision himself. I think that's why he let me come home. He's hoping we'll force his hand, one way or another."

"Maybe he's just afraid of Alice," Bella offered. "If he knows she saved us from the Volturi, then maybe he doesn't want to mess with her."

"Regardless," Carlisle said, "we still have to figure out what to do. One option, of course, is simply to do nothing. We hunker down and wait."

"And go crazy," Edward said. "How is that an option?"

"It's an option because it's what we've been doing."

Rosalie finally spoke up. "We can run," she said.

"And spend the rest of our lives as fugitives," Carlisle replied. "Is that the life we want for Renesmee?"

"At least she'd be free," Rosalie noted.

"Let's attack them," Emmett suggested. "Kill this Owen."

"That's what he's daring us to do," Carlisle explained. "He made no secret of where his offices are. He even had me to his house for dinner one night. Don't you understand? We kill him, or any human for that matter, and they lump us with every other vampire. Besides, is that who we want to be, Emmett? There are people in this gathering who've never killed anyone. Do we want to ruin that? And even if we did kill him, it wouldn't solve anything. Another functionary would take his place - and likely someone not as inclined to be sympathetic toward us."

"Sympathetic," Rosalie snorted.

"Think about it," Carlisle pressed. "Five of us have fed on humans in the past, and the United States has no statute of limitations on murder. You don't like the monitoring, and I understand that. But given our prior deeds and the constant risk we pose, couldn't it be argued that we're getting off light?"

"We steal a nuclear weapon," Jasper declared. "We destroy Washington D.C. That kills Owen plus whoever might replace him, and wipes out his entire agency."

"The government has continuity plans in case the capitol is destroyed," Carlisle said. "To eliminate the federal government for real would require nuking enough sites that the entire country disintegrates. In the end that's no different than building a newborn army and declaring war on modern civilization. Which is the very fear driving Owen. What we need to do is convince him vampires won't do these things."

"Have you ever considered that he might be right?" Edward asked. "Maybe _we're_ not going to go to war against humanity, but others might. If Owen backs our race into a corner, if vampires begin feeling an existential threat, he might cause the disaster he says he's trying to prevent."

"What if we went public?" Esme offered. "We declare our existence to the world. What's stopping us, now that the Volturi are gone? Owen would lose control of the whole situation. We wouldn't have to deal with him anymore."

Carlisle shook his head. "We feared the Volturi so much, it's easy to forget the service they provided. How they kept us all alive. If humanity learned of us, the majority would try to annihilate us. But that wouldn't be the real problem. The real problem would be the minority who would want to become vampires themselves. Powerful people who would want to stay in power. Sick people who would want to be cured. Our kind would multiply exponentially. Humanity really would be destroyed. That's what the Volturi were preventing."

"Can it be reversed?" Bella asked hesitantly. "Can we be turned back? Back into humans?"

"I can't even figure out how to eliminate venom from our bite," Carlisle said. "What you're asking would be much more difficult."

"But if it could be done," Bella pressed, "if every vampire on earth could be rounded up and turned back into humans, surely that would satisfy him. No one would have to die."

"Vampires would still consider that an existential threat," Edward said.

"Exactly," Carlisle replied. "And that's what we really need to decide. What loyalty do we have to ourselves _as a species?_ Do we insist that vampires continue to exist, to reproduce? Or is it enough for us that our family survives? Do we help Owen, or do we fight against him? At the end of the day, whose side are we on?"

Alice had had enough. She glanced at Edward, who nodded. Then she jumped into the middle of the conversation. "You just don't get it," she declared. "Join Owen. Fight Owen. It doesn't matter. We all die. Why can't you see? Why can't you understand? The destruction of the Volturi has set such things in motion...there's no stopping it. Every path's the same. Every path's the same." She began to grow hysterical. Edward and Jasper tried to calm her down. She pushed them away.

"There has to be some choice we're not considering," Edward said. "Something outside the box. If the Volturi were preventing the mutual annihilation of humans and vampires, if they were really that important, then maybe we should take their place. We could enforce the law like they did."

"Owen would never accept a return to the old status quo," Carlisle said.

"So new laws," Bella suggested. "No one eats humans. We force all vampires to follow our lifestyle."

Alice shook her head. "Our kind won't accept that kind of control. They'll fight. Owen wants us to stop eating humans. We _don't_ want to stop eating humans. He pushes. We push back. If only they didn't care! If only the humans would just let us eat them."

"Maybe you can change our tastes," Bella said. "Maybe with enough time you could do it, Carlisle. Alter us. Make it so that we prefer animals. We used to be shadow-feeders, right? So we can change. We can change a lot. Make us change."

Alice collapsed on the ground, desperate. She felt pathetic, a child incapable of making decisions: her visions had always made her decisions for her. But now her power was useless. There was no path to follow. And in her helplessness she suddenly realized Edward was right. There _was_ a choice she had never considered: she could make a choice without using her gift at all.

"This is what he wants," Alice declared, the pieces suddenly clicking into place. "He wants my vision so choked up I can't use it. He wants me to...grow up." But why would Owen care?

"Carlisle," she said. "He has Lucy and Jane. Could he be a collector like Aro?"

"Aro collected pawns," Carlisle said. "He's not interested in pawns."

_No_, Alice thought. _Not pawns. Queens. He wants me to be a queen!_

"He wants to collect me," Alice said. "But he doesn't want my gift." _He wants me!_ she thought. _He wants me to learn how to function without my gift. He wants me to grow up._

A new path opened in Alice's mind, but it wasn't a vision-path. It was a hope founded on sudden faith in the man who had been leading her these past six months - though she had not known it. Respect burst from her heart for this mysterious hunter who desired _her_ rather than her ability, who wanted her to become something far greater than she had ever been. A human who demanded nothing less than her transformation from a vampire into a goddess.

There was Owen's hate for Bella, though. Nothing could be accomplished until that was dealt with. It was a problem Alice had no idea how to fix. She considered her blind uncertainty, her darkness, her doubt - so many decisions to make based exclusively on experience and wit and love. She couldn't help herself: she smiled. _Whatever you're doing to block up the future, Owen Wheeler, please keep doing it!_

Alice stood. "Bella and I are going to Virginia," she declared. "We are going to form a new coven. And a human will be our leader."


	9. Chapter 9

**With Bella It's Personal**

_Maybe I should make Alice kill her._

Owen pondered this thought as he watched security camera footage on his office wall. Lucy was leading Alice and Bella through the building's nearly deserted lobby. Owen glanced over his shoulder at Jane, noted the petulant fury distorting her features. Owen returned his attention to the monitor and frowned. It seemed Mrs. Cullen had little chance of surviving until dawn.

He took a seat behind his desk, with Jane standing to his left. Lucy brought in the two members of the Olympic Coven and took up position on his right. Owen had come to understand how much Jane despised Alice and Bella: Aro's longing to collect them had driven Jane mad with jealousy. But Owen couldn't let Jane kill Bella. Not yet. She still wanted it too badly. First growth and _telos_ and self-control. _Then_ the traitor's head on a plate.

"We've come to join your coven," Alice began, "to continue the work of the Volturi. We will add a new law to their code: no killing humans. Eat animals, or face our wrath."

Owen nodded. "You made the hard decisions that saved your family from Aro," he said. "You produced a creative solution that avoided casualties. You're the one who figured out what I wanted. Remarkable leadership potential, though you probably don't realize it. How I've longed to have the training of you! If we do this right you'll become the greatest leader your world has ever known."

Alice stepped forward. "_You_ are our leader," she declared.

"For now," Owen acknowledged. "You must learn to thrive apart from your gift, and that will take time. But _her_," Owen said, gesturing toward Bella while keeping his attention fixed on Alice. "Why did you bring her here?"

"Because you have to learn also," Alice said. "You have to learn to get over your hangup, whatever it is."

Owen smiled despite himself. How right he'd been to pick Alice!

"We could change you," Bella suggested. "You could see things from our perspective. You could lead this coven for centuries."

A blinding rage threatened to overwhelm Owen. It was all he could do to keep from siccing Jane on her. "You stupid child!" Owen spat, rising and circling his desk to get in Bella's face. "How dare you speak as though becoming a vampire is a positive outcome. Like it's something anyone should desire! I am a human being. Human! What are you? You're _nothing_."

"I'm more than some bitter old man who gets off on controlling others," Bella proclaimed, and she leaned forward. Alice grabbed her around the waist.

"So Bella has a bit of spunk," Owen said. "That's good to see. I still say you're nothing."

"You don't even know me," Bella replied.

"Don't I? It's been over half a year since I destroyed the Volturi. What have you done with that time? Hiding. Waiting. Nothing."

"What was I supposed to do?"

"That you even ask the question proves what a zero you really are." Owen pulled a stack of photographs from his desk and shoved them in Bella's face.

Bella took the pictures and began glancing through them. They showed image after image of mangled, bloodless bodies, eyes staring vacantly in pain and terror. After a minute Bella shoved the pile of images away. "I don't know these people," she said.

"Exactly," Owen declared. "You don't know them, so you don't care about them. That's what makes you pathetic. All you care about is your own little world. Your own personal happiness. And if there are vampires eating people this very day - why, that has nothing to do with you. As long as _you're_ happy, that's all that matters. And the worse thing about it is that you're _able_ to be happy. You _know_ what vampires are doing. You know it, Bella. And despite that knowledge you're still able to feel content. Pathetic freak."

"There's nothing wrong with being happy," Bella protested.

"Wrong," Owen maintained. "Yours is the happiness of the man who hears a rape victim crying for help, and instead of helping he shuts the window and goes back to his television program. So what if that loser is happy? So what if he enjoys his show? It's a monstrous happiness he's feeling. Sick, perverted, repulsive. And that's what you are. I spit on your happiness. I hope you die."

Bella shook her head. "We try to make a difference. We only eat animals. We encourage others to follow our example."

"Yes, you've done something," Owen allowed. "But how is that the same as doing enough? If I'm carrying a gun at the mall when some psycho runs in and starts shooting people, is it enough that I set a good example by not joining in? Don't I have an obligation to be proactive, to return fire, regardless of the risk to myself? And if I refuse to intervene, what kind of an excuse is, 'It's OK, as long as I'm happy?'"

"What do you expect? You want me to be miserable like you?"

"I want you to give a damn about people you don't know. I've saved thousands of lives through the vampires I've slain. I don't know those people I saved. I never will. They'll never know what I did for them. They'll never thank me. I care about them anyway. They matter to me. I'm human. But there's no humanity in you. You were a self-centered, narcissistic Nazi long before you met the Cullens."

"You bastard," Bella muttered.

"Yes, I'm a bastard," Owen admitted. "But the people I've saved, Bella - _they don't care._ All they care about is that they're alive."

"How about them?" Bella challenged, motioning to Owen's servants. "Do _they_ care about humans?"

"Lucy's a monster and Jane's a psychopath," Owen replied. "What's your excuse? Besides, they're not pretending to be something they're not. But you, Bella - you probably kiss your daughter goodnight thinking you're somehow one of the good guys, that because you haven't killed anyone that means you're not evil. The most powerful shield on earth. Think of all the lives you could have saved the last six months! Instead you buried your head in the sand and hoped I would go away."

"I thought you didn't want us using our gifts."

"Some must stop using their powers," Owen explained, "until they relearn how to think. But it seems you haven't even started using yours. So many lives you could have saved, Bella. What sort of creature are you? _Why don't you care?"_

"Head on a platter," Jane interrupted. "Can I give it to you, Master?"

"Bring it," Bella challenged.

Jane drew a .44 Magnum and aimed it at Bella's face. "White phosphorous. Care to learn how it feels?"

Alice intervened. "Let's assume you're right," she said. "Bella's shallow. How good are you, Owen? Can you get someone this vapid and self-centered to care about all those people getting eaten? Isn't that the sort of challenge you're looking for?"

"Why should I bother?" he asked.

"Because you need a long-term solution, and the power of the law isn't it. The only way vampires are going to permanently shift to an animal diet is if _they_ start caring about their victims. I realize it sounds ridiculous. So start with Bella. Try to get _her_ to care about random humans. Try with her and see where it takes us."

Owen found this notion intriguing. And _he_ hadn't thought of it. Was it possible? Could a vampire be made to feel compassion toward its natural prey? An absurd notion, of course. But interesting. Owen liked interesting.

"How to define success?" he mused. "Jane, the day will come when I give Bella to you. How miserable will she have to be for you to decide to let her live, just so she can keep suffering?"

"Pretty miserable, Master."

"That's what I thought," he replied, redirecting his attention to Alice. "Very well. We'll try it your way. We get Bella invested in the war. We see if she can change, if she can grow beyond herself, if she can become a deep person. Hopefully she comes to care so much that the horror wrecks and ruins her. Such an empty shell that even Jane chooses to spare her. Yes. I like this," he concluded. "A plan with definite potential. And who knows? Maybe we really do discover a way to transform at least some vampires into compassionate creatures."

Bella approached him, her voice grim. "You talk about compassion, but all I hear is bitterness. It's more than war to you. It's insane, irrational hate."

Owen lifted a hand and stroked Bella's cheek. "Mrs. Cullen," he replied softly, "I'm perfectly rational. The only vampires I hate are happy ones."


	10. Chapter 10

**Anger Isn't Interesting**

Jane had been working the Virginia section of the Appalachian Trail for over two hours when she came across a pair of male hikers headed north. They stared at her in confusion - a stunning young female alone in the mountains without a pack - and then offered assistance. Jane thought about eating them just to piss Owen off. Eventually she settled for a boring conversation in which she reassured the men hers was a short day-hike from a nearby farm. She broke contact and continued south.

A peculiar feature of vampires was that they required no exercise to maintain strength - just blood. Jane had chosen to go hiking simply to test Owen. Was she really free to come and go as she pleased, or would her new master use Alice and Bella to compel her to remain in place? Jane hadn't told him where she was going. She had simply walked out the door and headed west. But no one in the agency lobby had stopped her, or even questioned her. She could keep walking and never look back.

There were the satellite passes, of course. Jane knew their schedule, however, and could take cover before they came in range. She also wore a thermal-shield hoodie that masked her infrared signature, and she moved beneath a bare, hardwood canopy. It dawned on Jane that she really was alone. No one knew where she was. Not even Lucy.

She ached for Alec. He should be here with her. It was his fault she was alone. Why had he been in the catacomb when Owen bombed it? Why couldn't Owen have waited? How could Aro have been so stupid? The humiliation of serving her brother's murderer crushed her. She thought about retracing her steps and torturing the two hikers. The only thing preventing her was the knowledge that Owen was daring her to do exactly that. To show him that she was beyond redeeming, beyond helping. To show that she wasn't worth the effort.

In frustration Jane tracked a bear, ripped it from a tree branch, and bit savagely into its throat. She gagged on the blood and spit it out, disgusted. How could the Cullens live on such garbage? The hikers came to mind again. She threw the carcass aside and ran from the trail, fearful of what she might do.

She hated Owen Wheeler - for killing Alec, for binding Jane to himself, for making her think. And now he had taken into his service the two vampires she hated most in the world. The prospect of making Bella suffer mollified Jane a bit, but it wasn't enough to take away the sting of living and working with three individuals she yearned to slay. Laser Bella, pain Alice, chop Owen. It would be so easy. Too easy. Owen had given her so much power. Why? Why had he entrusted her with the ability to ruin everything?

She pondered breaking the Platers out of their prison, starting her own coven, making Owen's fears a reality. But then the training would cease. She would never discover why she existed. How infuriating it was! Owen had done this - stripped away everything, made her conflicted, compelled her to look inside herself. She hated that Owen's strategy was working, that he was succeeding in forcing her into an existential crisis. Even this random hike was probably part of his infernal plan: step 27 on the path to teleological awakening.

He made her so angry! Which brought up one of his pet sound bites: "Anger isn't interesting." What did that mean? What were Owen's real goals? He had made no effort to switch her to an animal diet. He was content to let her drink donated blood. His goal for Bella was that she care about humans. Why wasn't that his goal for Jane? Owen wanted Jane to be interesting. On his personal scale was interesting an easier goal to reach than compassionate? Maybe he was just using Jane, keeping her as the heavy so Alice and Bella didn't have to get their hands dirty.

Jane paused and leaned against an oak tree. Why didn't she just kill Owen? He had gotten Bella away from Carlisle's coven - though not away from Alice. Why was Jane so afraid of Lucy? Why did she like Lucy so much?

Jane grabbed the tree and screamed. This was exactly what Owen wanted - Jane questioning everything. But why? He didn't know what the end result would be. He couldn't. He was feeling his way, blind, uncertain. Aro had never taken such risks. Training Jane was dangerous. She might use that training in unpleasant ways. And the maddening thing was that Owen knew this. He knew it, and he trained Jane anyway.

_Owen killed Alec. Lucy loves me. Alice will be leader, not me. He's torturing me with Bella's presence. He's torturing me with his presence. There's nothing he'd hate more than being turned. What does Owen want? I could break George out so easily. Why did he kill Alec? I need you, Alec. I miss being a slave to Chelsea. I hate myself for missing my slavery._

Jane collapsed in the dirt, wishing she could cry.

_Alec, Alec, what is happening to me?_

* * *

Jane nudged Peter and Charlotte toward the Plate during the early hours of January 5. Capturing the couple had proved exceedingly difficult, and would have been impossible without Alice. But after much persuasion their friend had convinced them to surrender without a fight. That didn't mean they liked it, however. Alice walked close to Jane, protecting her, while Bella and Lucy followed ten feet behind. A werewolf strode on either side of the party, guarding their flanks.

The extra security seemed warranted. The prisoners in the VDF had seen Jane come and go frequently, but for many this was their first look at Alice and Bella - and none had seen Lucy. Reactions would be unpredictable, and as the number of prisoners grew a mass escape attempt became increasingly likely. Jane had accordingly dressed in full combat kit, and had required Alice and Bella to do the same. Lucy, on the other hand, wore nothing but a pair of running shorts. Jane wondered if Lucy wanted everyone to get a good whiff of her, or if she was simply flaunting that she preferred fighting naked.

Jane halted fifteen meters from the plate, ordering her captives to cover the remaining distance on their own. They gave Jane nasty looks but did what they were told. No one on the plate seemed happy to see Peter and Charlotte. Their addition increased the prisoner count to seventeen. The plate was getting crowded.

But everyone was interested in Jane's companions, especially Lucy and the werewolves. They pushed as close to the edge of the plate as they dared, sniffing the air in fascination. George spoke for them. "Shape-shifters, Jane?" he asked.

"Natural enemies of vampires, these Quileutes," she answered. "Owen's in love with the things. They get paid more than I do."

"Doing the white man's bidding," George taunted. The wolves growled, but stayed where they were. "You look ridiculous in that getup, Jane. What's the point?"

Jane stroked the armor on her chest and neck. "You're thinking of steel, George." She took off her helmet and lobbed it through the air. George caught it, puzzled. "Try," Jane challenged.

George attempted bending the helmet, found to his surprise he was unable to do so. He set it on the tungsten-carbide plate and began hammering it with his fist. It cracked on the fourth blow.

"Composites," Jane explained, demanding the pieces back. Bella produced a fresh helmet from a large sack she was carrying, which Jane took and quickly strapped into place.

"I broke it," George noted.

"How often have you scored four unanswered hits?" Jane asked. "Armor's been useless for centuries, but it's catching up. You're behind the times, George."

"She doesn't seem to care for it," he noted, gesturing to Lucy.

"She's her own creature," Jane granted. "I've seen her feed. It's a...sobering experience."

Jane could see the questions churning in George's mind. Who was Lucy? _What_ was Lucy? Jane enjoyed his discomfort and frustration for as long as she dared, then drew her sidearm and aimed it at one of the scruffier-looking prisoners. "Winkler," she declared, "video surveillance from the last month shows you've been causing the most fights." She pulled the trigger.

The prisoner could have dodged the round, but he was dumb enough to stand there and let it hit, just to prove that bullets couldn't hurt him. The phosphorous exploded in a white puff, causing a flare to ignite from Winkler's chest. He fell to the ground screaming, flames digging into his lifeless heart. The other prisoners scattered as Winkler combusted.

"We burn so readily," Jane mused, keeping her gun pointed at the incredulous captives. "Our vampiric tissues must contain an oxidizing agent of some sort. If that's the case, that means once we start burning there's no way to put it out."

Only George had remained unmoved. "You've been learning chemistry," he commented dryly.

"I've been learning a lot of things," she replied, taking the bag from Bella and casting it onto the plate. "Tracking beacons," she added. "Each prisoner gets one on his ankle."

George pulled one out and examined it. "These _are_ easy to break," he observed.

"Of course," Jane said. "We are preparing a second stage of incarceration for those with six months good behavior. A hunting preserve in Wyoming. It's still a restricted area, but it's hundreds of square miles. Enough room for everyone. Unless you misbehave," she added, pointing to Winkler's remains already blowing away on the night breeze.

"You'll never be able to contain us in such a large space," George noted. "Hell, I've already figured out how to break out of here. Anything that blocks light should block these lasers - fog, dust, smoke. They can be circumvented under the right circumstances."

"Indeed," Jane agreed. "So why haven't you tried?"

"Because it's a test. Can I make myself stay, even when I realize I no longer have to?"

Jane nodded. "You're learning, too. Do you want to meet him?"

"I want to understand him."

"Join the crowd. He's driven by conflicting fears: afraid we'll become extinct, afraid we'll keep eating people, afraid his short and long term goals conflict, afraid of all the powerful people who will try to become vampires if they learn about us, afraid we will destroy modern civilization, afraid we won't figure out a solution."

"I don't see how imprisoning us accomplishes anything," George objected. "Killing us, yes. But containing us? It's certainly not going to help him keep our existence secret. And it foments within us a desire to strike at humanity."

"I realize it's counterintuitive," Jane acknowledged. "I just keep coming back to his weakness: he's not smart enough to figure it all out, and he knows it. I think in the end that's why he does everything. He can't think of a solution, so he's trying to make us think of one for him. That may be why he's pulling us together. He's trying to put us under so much stress that we change. Adapt. Grow. _Something_. Somehow we get to the point where we do for him what he can't do for himself."

"You told me once he wants science fiction to win. I don't see how we can make that happen."

"I don't think that's quite what he's after. Bella suggested developing a means of turning us back into humans, but he didn't seem interested. He's a vampire hunter, but the extermination of our species does't appear to be his goal. He's the strangest man I've ever met." She turned to leave.

"You know," George called after her, "to a lot of us you're just a bad version of the Volturi."

Jane turned back for a moment. "Not Volturi," she corrected. "Queens."

George sneered. "Well that makes sense. Your king's the weakest piece on the board."

"And the most important," she added, and led her escorts away.

* * *

"In seeking the purpose of humanity," Owen began, "we start at the two extremes."

Jane shifted in her chair, glanced to her right. From the look on Lucy's face she could tell the woman had already heard this lecture. It wasn't even 8pm yet. That meant Lucy had just woken up. Jane wondered what the shadow-feeder actually wanted to be doing right now. Did she like sleeping with Owen? Did she wish Owen loved her?

"The traditional Christian answer," Owen continued, "is that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We exist that we might relate to our Creator. Think martyrs and John Bunyan. At the other end of the spectrum is philosophic naturalism: man has no purpose, and can't have a purpose. We are a cosmic accident, sacks of chemical reactions brought together by random, undirected processes. Life should be spent stimulating the pleasure centers of our brains. Think YOLO and Kesha."

Jane had nothing to say to this. Owen changed approaches. "Imagine it this way," he suggested. "Is math invented or discovered? I don't mean symbols, or methods of solving problems. I mean the underlying concepts. Has two plus two always equaled four, and man simply discovered this truth? Or did we invent addition and impose it on the world? Likewise do we invent our purpose? Or do we merely discover it?"

_Has Lucy found her purpose?_ Jane wondered. She seemed focused, certainly, but a person could pursue an object as a way of avoiding hard questions. Why didn't Lucy or Owen ever answer the questions they put to her? Did they think truth existed, or were they just trying to get her to reason? But why teach her to reason if there was no truth to discover?

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Excuse me?" Jane asked, startled from her reverie.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Owen pressed.

Jane felt at a loss. This was not a question she had been asked as a child. Certainly no one had asked her since. She would never grow up. She couldn't grow up.

"What do you...?"

"I kill vampires," Jane said. "That's what I do. That's all I want to do."

"Do you feel satisfied when you kill vampires?"

"I feel...less stressed," she tried to explain.

"That's not what I'm asking," Owen said. "When you kill vampires, do you feel like you're doing what you're meant to do?"

"Do you?" Jane shot back.

Owen recoiled as if Jane had slapped him in the face.

"Tell me," he demanded, "what did Alec want to be when _he_ grew up?"

"Alive," Jane retorted, activating her power and striking Owen with everything she had.

She had pained Owen briefly on the night they had first met. This time Jane did a much more thorough job of it. She made the impudent human grovel and scream, foam at the mouth and soil his clothes. During it all Jane studied Lucy, waiting for her to intervene. But as in Vienna ten months ago, Lucy did nothing. She just sat there, seeming neither pleased nor displeased, waiting for Jane to finish.

Owen passed out. Jane stopped. It took the man several minutes to regain consciousness. He rolled onto his hands and knees and made eye contact with his torturer. "You're such a bitch, Jane," he gasped. Then he crawled through the door and vanished.

Jane smelled the mess on the floor, the noxious combination of sweat, blood, and vomit representing the only pleasure still present in her life. "Why doesn't it affect him?" she pleaded. "Why doesn't he care?"

"You can be in so much pain that more doesn't matter," Lucy said.

Jane felt like she was suffocating - a bizarre, long-forgotten sensation. "Why isn't he trying more with me?" she begged. "Why doesn't he try to make me..._not_ a sadist? Why doesn't he make me eat animals? Does he think I'm damaged goods? That I can't do what they do?"

"No one's stopping you," Lucy observed.

Jane ran from the building and entered the adjacent woods. She claimed a deer, tore its head off, and devoured the bitterly bland blood. She heard Lucy approach. Lucy and her cruel, beating heart.

"Aro should have let me burn," Jane said. "It would have been better. What am I now? I'm nothing."

Lucy knelt beside her. "Cancer was killing me. I refused to die. I don't know if _you're_ nothing. But I know that's what I am." She shifted in the leaves, glanced at the stars. "I think that's part of why he keeps us alive. To torture us with being undead."

"He said he only hates happy vampires."

"Oh, he doesn't hate us. He hates himself. The mystery of him is that he doesn't just care about humans. He cares about us, too. When we suffer, he suffers. That's why he makes us suffer. It's a way of hurting himself."

Jane wiped the blood from her mouth and shook her head. "Your boyfriend's got issues," she said.


	11. Chapter 11

**How to Train Your Other Vampire**

Alice followed close as Lucy led her, Bella, and Jane into Tysons Galleria. Shopping didn't mean as much to Alice as it used to, what with Lucy blocking most of her vision and Owen discouraging her from using the rest. Still, the Galleria was a clear step up from anything Seattle had to offer. And the Four Queens trying on dresses might even be fun.

But of course nothing involving Jane could be fun. Alice stepped from a changing room looking perfect in a ten thousand dollar designer dress, only to have Jane whip out her iPhone and begin making suggestions.

"The same dress can be bought online for eight thousand dollars," Jane pronounced. She continued tapping her screen. "A near-equivalent can be had at outlets in Buffalo and Lancaster for less than five. And an appropriate substitute is available at nearby Tysons Corner for a mere seven hundred dollars."

Jane glanced up from her smartphone in triumph. Her face quickly fell as she discovered the look on Alice's face.

Alice produced her own phone and typed a query. She presented the screen so Jane could see it. "Look," Alice noted, "an army-navy surplus less than two miles away."

Relief washed over Jane's face. "Back at nine," she declared, making her escape before Alice could change her mind. Alice and Bella burst into laughter.

After five more dresses Lucy led them to Macy's. It annoyed Alice, of course, Lucy's making every little decision. But the day was probably soon at hand when Owen let Alice start using her power again. That's when the real challenge would begin: learning to take advantage of her clairvoyance without becoming dependent upon it. Falling back into old habits would be easy - and Owen was certain to do whatever unpleasant things were necessary to keep that from happening.

It was about an hour later, while looking at Bella across a rack of clothes, that Alice suddenly realized Lucy had slipped away. The realization seemed to strike Bella at the same moment.

"Do you think we're really alone?" Bella whispered.

Alice nodded, wondering. Lucy never did anything without a reason. Was the shadow-feeder _finally_ giving them a chance to talk in private?

"Are you buying any of it?" Bella demanded, her voice urgent. "Or should we just kill Owen and Jane, and make a run for it?"

"You only just left Owen's world," Alice said, "so shouldn't you understand it better than I? What do you make of all the science fiction?"

Bella crouched, carved two intersecting lines into the floor. "Label the x-axis in years," she explained, "with the origin the beginning of the human race. The y-axis represents man's scientific knowledge. This curve," Bella continued, starting at the origin and drawing what at first appeared to be a line almost parallel to the x-axis, "shows that for a long time man's knowledge of science remained minimal. But note how the curve starts moving upward. It's not linear. That's the key thing you have to get. It's not that technology is improving. Everyone knows that. It's that technology is improving _exponentially_. If this trend continues, humans will discover far more in the next hundred years than they did in the last hundred. And the curve keeps arcing upward, till..."

"Till what?" Alice demanded.

"Till they reach Owen's future: humans become gods, at least compared to us. They destroy us at their leisure. Unless man's progress is halted by some catastrophe."

"Which Owen thinks we will cause," Alice concluded.

"Exactly."

The women stood up. "Would we do it?" Alice asked "_Will_ we do it?"

She watched carefully as hate and resentment flashed across Bella's face, a year's suppressed anger at Owen's having taken over their lives. Bella returned Alice's stare for several seconds, then folded her arms and looked away. "Yes," she hissed.

* * *

Alice received Owen into her office during the early hours of March 13, 2013. "Impress me," he demanded.

Alice called up a computer graphic and displayed it on her wall monitor. "This is your boss' house," Alice observed, noting the suburban Virginia home currently stalked by two white dots: Edward and Jasper. "According to Edward, he's having thoroughly inappropriate thoughts. Thinking about becoming one of us, in fact. He's also told his wife, and she's told her best friend."

Owen swore. "Can anyone keep a secret?" he lamented.

"Jane will eat your boss tomorrow," Alice continued. "What we need to decide is what to do with the women." Alice waited as Owen pondered this question. He claimed to care about human lives, but how much did he, really?

"Just scare them," Owen concluded, shaking his head. "We can always clean them up later if we have to. Stupid a-hole," he swore again.

If Owen's previous discussions on this matter were true, this would be the third supervisor he had been forced to kill. It seemed no one but Owen could handle awareness of the vampire world. And what did that mean for their long-term future? Sooner or later the government's knowledge of their species would have to be eliminated.

Alice shifted her computer's attention to Ireland. "We need to have a serious talk about the Irish Coven," she said.

"What about them?" Owen asked.

"Their leader, Siobhan. She may possess an unusual gift. If she concentrates on a situation, she can affect the outcome. Like whatever she wishes comes true."

"You're kidding me."

"She's not even sure she has the gift. Carlisle suspects she has it, but it's kind of untestable. If she does have it, capturing her will prove impossible. Or moving against her in any way, actually. I mean think about it. Here's a known coven right on our map. We know exactly where they are. Yet we've done nothing about them. Carlisle would probably say that's Siobhan's gift at work."

Owen became agitated. "I want her dead," he pronounced. "Dead in the worst possible way."

"Why? It could be a useful gift."

"It offends me. You're saying here's a woman who can affect the world by lying in bed stressing over it. Imagine how many women would love such power! To realize one's desires by obsessing. Don't get out there and _solve_ your problems. Just dwell on them and feel anxious about them, and they'll magically go away. If word of this gift ever got out, half the women on earth would fight to become vampires, just for the slightest chance of acquiring it."

"Well, if she _does_ have the gift," Alice persisted, "we won't actually do what you're suggesting. We'll talk about killing her, then go on ignoring her anyway."

Owen approached the wall monitor, stared at the three white dots in Ireland. "Siobhan the stress-obsess goddess," he mused. "I wonder."

"I'm actually bringing her up to make a point," Alice said. "There are vampires with powerful defensive abilities. We'll never get them all."

Owen faced her. "I know," he replied. "There could be classes of vampires we never discover. There are defensive gifts we may never figure out how to counter. Add in how quickly vampires reproduce, and the hard reality is that their extermination is impossible.

"You must factor this into every decision you make. Some sort of co-existence is your only option. You must make them co-exist with us, Alice. Without eating us. Without attacking our technology. Somehow, someway, you must simply get your species to leave us alone."

* * *

Alice and Bella lurked inside an MRAP, a Transylvanian farmhouse just over the hill. This was their third day watching video of the family soon to be eaten by Vladimir and Stefan.

Owen had let Alice use her powers for a few minutes, enabling the Four Queens to set an ambush for the Romanian coven. Alice didn't know for certain why Lucy had filled the hapless humans' dwelling with surveillance equipment, but she feared the worst. Owen detested Bella's romanticizing of the vampiric condition, and although Bella was no longer a newborn, she had still never actually seen a vampire consume its natural prey. Lucy was probably hoping to give Bella a horror movie introduction to vampiric reality.

The door to their vehicle opened unexpectedly. Lucy entered and closed the hatch behind her.

"They'll smell you," Alice complained.

"You said they'll approach from the north," Lucy replied. "I'm downwind."

"You left Jane alone."

"Jane doesn't need me."

Alice couldn't object to that. No one f-cked with Jane. Especially when Jane had the hunt-lust in her eyes and four laser cannons slaved to her targeting system. The former Volturi guard leader had hunted the Romanians for so many centuries. She was beside herself with eager expectation at the prospect of bringing them to ground at last.

Alice returned her attention to the video monitors. Three days watching this simple family, observing their dinner table quirks, trying to learn Romanian as the mother read bedtime stories - Alice felt like she knew them. But that was the point, of course. These humans were no longer statistics, nutrition, talking heads. They were people - _real_ people. Watching them get slaughtered would be a nightmare. Unless Lucy changed her mind at the last moment. Alice didn't think she would, though. And no one f-cked with Lucy. Not even Jane.

The farmwife had just finished bathing her youngest daughter when Vladimir and Stefan arrived. They did not enter the home immediately, but instead circled several minutes, examining for threats. One of the MRAP's monitors showed the targeting display from Jane's helmet. Jane could make clean kills on both vampires.

"Why doesn't she fire?" Bella asked.

Lucy said nothing, and neither did Alice.

"Order her to fire," Bella demanded, her voice urgent. She rose from her seat.

"Sit down," Lucy ordered.

Bella froze, realization dawning on her face. Alice felt sick. But if watching a bloodbath got Bella on board, in the long term it would result in fewer human deaths. That was how Alice justified it, anyway. It was still horrifying to watch.

Vladimir and Stefan entered the house and went to work. Their cruelty was petty and juvenile compared to Jane's. They consumed the children first, forcing the parents to watch. Jane would never have done that. Could there be such a thing as _sophisticated_ sadism? Bella tried to turn the volume down, but Lucy wouldn't let her. The family's parting screams would be engraved in their memories forever.

"Flush them," Lucy finally ordered, releasing Bella from the MRAP. Bella rushed to the farmhouse and ripped open the door, Alice close behind. The Romanian vampires did not hesitate. They jumped through a window and ran.

Two hundred meters from the dwelling Stefan fell to the ground, his right foot no longer attached to his body, the stump of his leg on fire. The next instant Vladimir collapsed, limbs contorted in agony. Jane appeared over Vladimir, her gleeful face glowing in the light of Stefan's combustion.

Jane ceased the torture once Bella and Alice had taken up positions behind Vladimir. The four of them watched in helpless fascination as Stefan writhed and cried and oxidized. This must have been why Jane had struck her target in the ankle: it took that much longer for him to to die.

Jane began stomping on Stefan's ashes while directing a mad smile into Vladimir's eyes. Yet the Romanian vampire did not loose his arrogant, almost indifferent, expression. That pissed Alice off. What did the Four Queens have to do to earn a little respect?

Vladimir directed his attention toward Alice. "The Volturi hunted us for two thousand years," he declared proudly. "They never caught us. How long did it take you, Alice?"

"Three days," she answered.

Vladimir grinned. "Now you know why..." The smug look vanished, replaced with sudden confusion and wide-eyed terror: Lucy had appeared.

Their captive made a break for it. Alice tackled him, while Bella pinned his arms. "Dear God, no!" he screamed. "Kill me, Jane, you worthless whore. Kill me!"

Alice joined everyone else in staring at Vladimir in confusion. Lucy approached him slowly, calmly, fascinated by his reaction. He ceased struggling, now paralyzed with a crippling fear Alice had never seen in any vampire's face.

Lucy reached out and stroked Vladimir's hair. Then she lifted his hand to her mouth and bit the inside of his wrist.

Vladimir jerked away, screaming. Alice let him go as he began convulsing, blood spraying from between his teeth, dust pouring from his eyes and ears. The Four Queens backed away, and it was a good thing they did. Vladimir's frenzy grew increasingly violent until, with one final cry, he exploded into powder.

Alice grimaced, wiping the Romanian remains from her shirt. No one f-cked with Lucy.

* * *

Alice received Owen into her office during the early hours of May 25, 2013. "Impress me," he demanded.

"Edward and Jasper just took out a shadow-feeder," she offered.

"Really?" Owen asked, surprised. "I was starting to think Lucy really was the last one."

"They tracked him into South Carolina, then let a human sniper team take him out. Their attempts at burning the body were unsuccessful, but then they exposed it to sunlight. Apparently the fire was much more violent than when one of our kind is burned."

Owen seemed strangely upset by this. He rubbed his hands through his hair and turned away.

"Did I do something wrong?" Alice asked. Owen wiped his face. Was he _crying_?

"You're doing your job," Owen croaked. "Keep doing it." He stood silent for several minutes, his back to Alice, then eventually settled into a chair beside her desk.

"I think I can dig up some details about your past," Owen offered, changing the subject. "If you're interested."

"I've never asked," Alice replied. She waited, but Owen said nothing. "I think we should focus on the future," she finally added, making an effort to keep the longing out of her voice. How hard it was, serving another, submitting to another, suppressing her own wishes and desires. Yet never for a moment did she forget that the Cullens were on probation, that the man who killed the Volturi could easily do the same to her entire family. There was also something paradoxically liberating about following orders. Alice had never been so tightly bound, yet she had never felt so free.

"We seem to have a fresh outbreak of newborns down south," Alice informed him. "I've been emailing Maria, trying to keep her reasonable. I dropped a JDAM on one of her houses, too. She's difficult to convince."

"Why not just kill her?" Owen asked.

"In my mind she's something of a test case. Can we get someone so old-school to embrace the new reality? If we can switch her coven to animal blood, we can probably switch just about anybody."

"Good luck with that," Owen muttered.

"She's a child," Alice said. "Despite her age and experience, she's still just a child. No one has ever worked with her, trained her, disciplined her. The Volturi used fear to keep us in check, but they never tried to teach us anything. They never tried to help us grow up.

"And growing up is what we need to do," she continued. "I mean look at us. Attending high school over and over again? Seriously? You were right. We went along with the Volturi too easily. We were self-righteous and self-centered. We need to do more. We need to make the most of the Volturi being dead. We need to grow up."

"What are you thinking?"

"Your core concern is the growing technological disparity between humans and vampires. You think we will eventually feel threatened by this gap, and attempt to push humanity back into the 1700's. Certainly that's one way we could deal with it. But there is another way. Instead of bringing you down to our level of ignorance, we could raise ourselves up to your level of knowledge - and even surpass it."

"How will that help?"

"Because then we can use technology to counter technology. If advanced machines can kill us, then even more advanced machines can protect us. We can continue to coexist with humans, trusting in our superior technology. It will just take discipline, hard work, mutual respect, long-term thinking - everything the Volturi refused to instill in us."

Owen stood and began pacing. "You're going to force compulsory education on vampires, aren't you?"

Alice smiled. "We establish a secret research university. With modern communications we can keep it fairly decentralized, but there'll probably have to be a main campus somewhere. Wyoming seems a reasonable option. Think about how much we could accomplish! We never sleep, our memory is exceptional, we can do everything faster than humans, we don't die. Within ten years we can understand modern tech as well as any MIT prof. Another ten years and we'll have pressed completely into the realm of science fiction.

"And there's another advantage," Alice added. "We can make ourselves useful to humanity, researching fields that they value. That way if we ever do get discovered, we've got something to offer in exchange for our lives. Worse case scenario, we push to the point where we can leave earth entirely. Our physiology makes us better suited for deep-space colonization, anyway."

"It's a compelling possibility," Owen granted. "We fear what we don't know. If you remake yourselves into uber-geek vamps, you'll no longer feel threatened by science. It could become a source of wonder and purpose rather than danger and war."

Alice got up from her desk, approached Owen, dared to give him a gentle hug. "Weakness into strength," she whispered. "Isn't that what you teach us? If we can do it, you can do it, too. Own your weakness, Owen. I don't know what it is, but surely you can discover it. The insight you use on others - direct it into yourself. Search, probe, squirm, pursue. Refuse to give up no matter how painful. Dig out the weakness and own it, Owen. Dig out the weakness, and grapple it, and turn it into strength."


	12. Chapter 12

**The Killer in Me**

Bella ended her phone conversation with Renesmee, then stomped onto the Belle Haven Country Club fairway. It was two in the morning - just eleven in the evening back home - so Bella had at least been able to tell her daughter goodnight before meeting with Owen. Why the man wanted to get together on a golf course in the middle of the night was beyond Bella, but his reasons didn't matter. What mattered was that she was finally going to get a chance to kill him.

Owen emerged from the tree line near the sixth hole, stationed himself on the green, and waited. Bella moved toward him gradually, scanning the sky for Lucy. Had Owen chosen to do this on his own? Did that mean Alice might have seen this future? If so, she had given Bella no such indication. But Bella was no longer certain she could trust her sister-in-law. Over the last year Alice had developed an unfortunate love-hate relationship with their despicable master. Bella's attitude had remained much simpler: just hate.

Bella felt partly to blame. She had pressured Alice for visions without regard for the consequences. She had refused to conceive of Alice apart from her clairvoyance. In hindsight Bella could see how attractive Alice would find a master like Owen, the true anti-Aro, so thoroughly unimpressed by the things Aro had most valued. Yes, Alice had a power. But that power did not define her. It was not the essence of her personal identity. Bella saw that now. If only she had figured it out sooner!

She got within a few yards of Owen and halted. "The problem at this point," she began, "is that even if I kill you, Alice won't come back to us."

"She has seen the future," Owen agreed. "Not through clairvoyance, but through the eye of reason. She has internalized my focus and my fear. So that's at least one goal accomplished: I've proven stone vampires can change."

"She's not the typical vampire," Bella retorted.

"What about Jane? If I can change her, I can change anybody."

Bella frowned. "The jury's still out on Jane. Either way, better to say you may be able to change some vampires across the whole spectrum of inclinations. That's not the same as being able to change every single one of us."

Much to Bella's surprise, Owen smiled. "You caught me in a logical fallacy," he said. "When did you learn that?"

"I read a logic book last month. Perfect memory, remember?"

"Oh, the amazing things to come at Alice's school! I do hope she'll let me be a professor."

"It's not going to work," Bella said, shaking her head. "Her university idea. It won't make everything better."

"I know."

"Then why are you encouraging her?"

"It shows she's owned the mission, made it hers. That's the important thing right now. I thought of having a vampire school years ago. That's why I know it won't work: because _I _was able to think of it. Your team's job is to be _smarter_ than me, to come up with solutions I'll _never_ think of. Besides, the final answer may be quite complex. Perhaps Alice's Vampire U will provide a small but important piece of the puzzle."

Owen unzipped his jacket and drew a revolver. He aimed at a random tree, then broke the weapon open and examined his ammunition. "First vampire I killed was with this gun," he said. "No need for phosphorous. Regular bullets worked just fine."

"Is that where we end up?" Bella asked. "Killing each other?"

"You've got motive," Owen granted.

"How could you let that family die?" Bella demanded. "To make a point? Teach me a lesson? Put me in my place? We could have saved them."

"Did it work?" Owen asked.

Bella folded her arms and shook her head. "I won't apologize for wanting this. I'm happier now than I ever was as a human. Or I would be, if it weren't for you."

Owen returned his sidearm to its holster. "Imagine a romance in Nazi Germany," he said. "A woman falls in love with an SS officer. She is so happy. But the key to her happiness is ignoring what's happening to the Jews. What kind of happiness is that, Bella? Is it something to be desired? Cherished? Protected? The American soldier who shot her lover through the head, ending her happiness – wasn't it a good thing he did?"

"What if it's a false analogy?" Bella shot back. "What if our species is just higher up the food chain? Vampires eating humans is no different than lions eating gazelles. It's just nature."

"Then why are you vegetarians? Even if you are a different species, that doesn't turn humans into animals – and you know it. At least, your family knows it."

"If you're going to hate vampires for killing humans," Bella pressed, undeterred, "then you should hate humans for killing humans, too. That's the real reason humans are our natural prey: because humans are _humans'_ natural prey. What _are_ we, Owen? We're everything that's human. There's nothing actually new or different about us. We are human nature, accentuated."

"All of human nature?" Owen asked. "Greater strength and hunger and lust, sure. But where is the greater love and faithfulness and sense of duty to balance out the negatives? I'm not seeing it, Bella, except in Carlisle."

"How many _humans_ do you see it in? If Carlisle is one in a thousand, is that ratio really any different than in the regular human population?"

Owen fell silent. It occurred to Bella she had scored a point. Except what did that even mean? What, exactly, were they arguing about, and why? Why had Owen contrived this meeting in the first place?

"You're still trying to decide whether or not to spare my family," Bella concluded.

Owen nodded. "I've been looking for an excuse to let you live. But at the end of the day, killing every vampire I possibly can is still my default option, especially now that I have Alice. You must realize that. I'd like to give Carlisle a pass, but I can't very well wipe out the rest of you and leave him be. Alice will kill me after I do it, of course, but that doesn't matter. She's made the vision her own; that's not going to change no matter what I do. Having her kill me is the easiest way to pass the baton, anyway."

Bella felt desperate. Maybe she really should slay Owen, right here and now. But that was probably part of the test, of course. He was pushing her, trying to get her to lose control.

"What do I have to do," Bella demanded, "to get you to leave us alone?"

"Prove you're not shallow," Owen shot back.

"Alice wasn't really agreeing with you when she called me vapid. She was just trying to deescalate that situation."

Owen snorted and shoved a finger in Bella's face. "Saying you're not vapid is the worst possible way to try and convince me you're not vapid. That's _not_ how deep people prove they're deep, Bella. They prove it through their _actions_."

"I am not shallow!" Bella insisted.

"When someone accuses you of being superficial, defensive whininess is hardly the best response. That's exactly what I'm talking about, Bella. For some reason you still think talk matters. What matters is _deeds_. Prove through what you do that there is some substance to you. Granted, you hated what happened in Romania. But have you applied that lesson in any way? Do you think or act differently than before you watched that family get eaten? Why has Alice owned the mission, but you haven't?"

Bella opened her mouth to say Alice could see the future, but of course that wasn't the case here. "You give Alice something she needs," Bella said.

"True. That's how I got her interested. But that's not what keeps her here. Vampires eating people: that's what keeps her here. It matters to her. She cares. And you better learn to care, too, or everyone in your household is going to die."

"It's _romantic_," Bella pleaded. "Don't you get it? The whole vampire world – all of it, everything. We're beautiful. We never age. We get to live with each other forever. It's a _good_ thing, the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm living a fairy tale."

"Is that all romance is?" Owen asked. "Self-absorption devoid of care for the world? Yes, I'm sure you'll say I know nothing of romance. But that's where you're wrong. I used to be a romantic. Before the ashes. Now I know better. Emotion is one thing. Duty is another. A real human sacrifices his happiness so that others can be happy. Would you do that, Bella? If by dying you could have saved that Romanian family, would you have? How about giving up being a vampire? I know it doesn't make sense, but what if it did? If the moment before they died you could have saved them by forever returning to a human state, would you have done so?"

Bella wasn't listening. Instead she was thinking about the sentence she had never expected to hear come from Owen Wheeler's lips: _I used to be a romantic_. She inched toward him, using her enhanced vampiric senses to study his face. There was arrogance, of course. Anger, cunning, genius, insight. But also bitterness, and sadness, and pain. So much pain. How had she never seen it? "You were in love with a vampire," Bella concluded.

This statement hit Owen like a punch in the chest. He staggered backward, glancing quickly about as though uncertain where he was.

Bella pursued him, got back in his space, leaned forward till their foreheads nearly touched. Owen lifted a hand and stroked her cheek, but Bella could tell he wasn't really present. He stared through her into the echo of another woman. Bella glimpsed her in Owen's face and gasped: such vacant, despairing, undead eyes.

"That's why you goad us," Bella realized. "You _want_ to die. But you won't admit it. You _can't_ admit it. You want us to figure it out for ourselves."

Owen's mouth fell open. He let out a moan and broke contact.

"You say there's more to life than romance," Bella urged. "I agree with you, of course. But what is life without it? Animals eat, and mate, and survive. They don't know romance, though. It's part of what makes us _human_. I say romance is actually why you do everything you do, Owen Wheeler. And somehow _you've_ got to own it: saving people isn't enough. People also have to be worth saving. They have to actually _be_ human."

Owen took Bella's hand and lifted it to his face. "So cold," he whispered. "Always so cold." Then he lowered her hand, grasped it between his, and nodded. "I like interesting people, Mrs. Cullen. Now that I know you're one of them, let's see how interesting everyone can be together. I'm taking the Four Queens to Forks."


	13. Chapter 13

**The Kill**

Owen inspected the "special object" in the MRAP's passenger seat one last time, then ensconced himself in the rear and gave Jane the go-ahead. The former Volturi guard leader put the truck in drive and headed for the Cullen residence.

Owen belted himself in next to Bella, with Lucy opposite him and Alice to Lucy's right. The MRAP's interior was cramped; Owen had no idea how soldiers wearing combat gear fit inside one of these things. Jane was the only one of their number who had dressed for battle, but as she had the body of a 13-year-old, this still left her with plenty of room to maneuver.

"Cram all your pieces into one section of the board," Lucy remarked, "and see what happens."

"That's right," Owen replied. He wished he could tell her about the special object – the extra piece he had decided to add to the game – but if she knew about it, the monster inside her would probably make her bolt. Not that she had any more decisions to make; this was Alice's mission now, for better or for worse. But Owen wanted Lucy there at the end.

"Edward's going to read your mind," Bella noted. "We'll know your secrets."

Owen nodded. "I'm counting on it," he replied. "And since we're going to the place where secrets die, we might as well get a jumpstart on the process. This is your final exam, Alice. Pass and the mission is yours. The Four Queens are yours."

"What's the test?" Alice asked.

"Figuring out what the test is is part of the test," Owen explained.

"Edward will know soon enough," Alice said.

"Yes, and he'll also know not to tell you."

This angered Bella. "He won't do what you want," she insisted.

Owen merely smiled.

"Are you going to kill the Cullens?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know," Owen replied, confident that Jane could hear him despite the noise of the truck's engine. "If Alice fails the test, maybe. If she passes, maybe then, too. When I say I don't know what I'm going to do, I really mean I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm a vampire hunter. Stick me in a clearing with ten vamps and maybe I'll just flip out and kill them all. Who knows? Let's get the pieces together first. Then we'll see what happens."

Alice chimed in: "I set incendiary charges in your headquarters," she announced. "This morning I activated them. The building is ashes."

"About time," Owen replied. He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen, then showed it to Alice. "That's the VDF in Langley," he explained. The video revealed the plate to be empty.

"Where are they?" Alice asked.

"I let them escape." _That_ got Jane's attention. She whipped around and gave Owen a questioning look. "I let the ones in Wyoming escape, too."

"When?" Jane shouted.

"About the time my office burned down."

"Why would you do that?" Alice demanded.

Owen refused to reply. Jane returned her attention to the road. Lucy leaned forward and grasped Owen's hands.

"I love you," she said. "You know that, right?"

Owen winced. "I'm probably going to die today. You must know that."

"Don't go," Lucy insisted. "You don't have to be there. We can drop you off in Forks till it's over. Let vampires deal with vampires."

Owen shook his head. "I owe the gods a death," he said.

Lucy started crying. Owen reached across the narrow space, hugged her to himself, began stroking her hair. He didn't let go until they came to a halt in the Cullens' driveway.

* * *

Alice led the exodus from the MRAP. Jasper and the rest of her family stood in a semi-circle outside their home, Edward's brow knitted in concentration as he probed the mind of her erstwhile master. Alice ran to her husband and embraced him, explaining quickly that Owen expected something from her, though she had not yet figured out what. Jasper's eyes shot daggers of death at the lone human in the gathering. Owen seemed unperturbed.

"Tell me, Alice," Owen began, "what do you think it means to be undead?"

Alice realized the hunter was giving Edward the time he needed, decided to play along. "We have no blood. Our hearts don't beat. Our bodies can't change or bear children. Our lust for human blood is always threatening to overwhelm us. We endure the guilt of the lives we've taken."

"I see," Owen replied. "What do you think, Lucy?"

Lucy removed her sports bra, leaving only her running shorts in place. "To be undead means to have no hope," she said. "The future will never be better. It can't be better. Despair strangles every longing, every wish, every dream, and grinds them into ash. In the morning you wish it were evening. In the evening you wish it were morning. To be undead is worse than death, for the dead enjoy this much at least: they feel nothing."

"How about the word 'monster?'" Owen continued, "Anyone care to define that?"

"_You're_ a monster," Bella spat, even as she kept her arms wound tightly about Edward's waist.

"I'm a drill sergeant," Owen corrected. "Almost the same thing, I'll admit. But not quite. Do not begrudge me the miseries I put you through, Mrs. Cullen. The necessities of combat training are what they are. One day you may even respect me for them."

He waited to see if anyone else would speak up. "A monster," he finally elaborated, "is a human devoid of conscience, a person who never wonders whether an act is right or wrong, a sentient being who doesn't feel guilt or doubt or remorse."

Alice watched as Owen examined each vampire present: Carlisle, Esme, Emmett, Rosalie, Alice, Jasper, Edward, Bella, Jane, Lucy. It occurred to Alice that her master was very much outnumbered. Jane stood off to his right and Lucy to his left, but that was still eight on two. Count the laser cannon on the MRAP as another combatant. Owen had still put himself in a defenseless position. But that would be exactly what he wanted: to make it clear that the Cullens could easily overpower him, to tempt them with his weakness and helplessness. Self-control was their greatest power, but how strong was it? Could this human finally get them to give in?

Alice found herself longing for a vision. Lucy had backed off, and she was no longer making decisions. Alice and Edward were the real drivers here. Once Edward had read their minds long enough, he would start considering what to do. That, in turn, might activate Alice's power. But was that the way to pass the test?

"There is one vampire here," Owen said, "that I know for certain is neither undead nor a monster, and that is Carlisle Cullen. If there are others like him, now is the time to convince me."

Edward interrupted. "His attitude toward you hasn't changed, Bella," he explained to his wife. "He still thinks you're a monster."

Bella grew confused, then angry. "I thought you understood," she protested. "I thought you understood romance."

"It's all a test," Owen replied. "Haven't you figured that out, yet? Everything – and I mean _everything_ – is a test. You insisted romance matters. I agreed. But what did you _do_ with my agreement? How did you put it into action? I swear, it's like you refuse to learn. Feelings and words don't matter. I want _deeds_, Bella. _Deeds_.

"There are different roles in a romance. There are winners, so there have to be losers. When you say yes to one person, you're saying no to everyone else. That means some of us have to _do_ romance if anyone else is going to feel it."

Owen began moving toward Bella, daring her or Edward to strike. "What's the one thing that can make a concentration camp even more horrific than it already is? A happy couple living just outside the fence, indifferent to what is going on inside. The vampire world is a horror story, Mrs. Cullen. You've tried to turn it into a romance. But all that does is make it even more horrific.

"The irony is that your impulse is correct. You want to make it romantic, which is a good desire, but you're going about it all wrong. There's only one way to make horror romantic, and it's not by ignoring the horror and pretending it isn't there. It's by taking the romance, and turning it into a horror story."

_What is the test?_ Alice demanded of herself. _How do I pass?_ It disturbed her that by now Edward must know the answer, and her need for that answer – yet he refused to tell Alice. So Owen had guessed right. But how could Owen have done that? He didn't know Edward at all.

_I'm being tested. I'm being tested. How? Why?_ Why had Owen released the vampire prisoners? Didn't he realize they'd go on the rampage? Of course he realized it. That was why he had done it. But Owen's biggest priority was to keep vampires from eating humans. It made no sense.

Why had Owen brought them to Forks in the first place? He wanted to get Edward involved, but he could have done that in Virginia. Somehow the presence of her entire family must be an essential component of the test. But how?

It occurred to Alice that despite all the training the Four Queens had received over the last year and a half, an outside observer would never know it by looking at them. Lucy stood apart, a naked enigma. Jane stalked near the MRAP, playing with the targeting system in her helmet. The Cullen family was the one group here possessing genuine unity, but even Alice and Bella were not as tight as they used to be. Owen had shattered their world; Alice and Bella no longer inhabited the same piece.

Owen had trained the queens, but they were still just four individuals. There was no cohesion or commitment. They were not actually a team at all. When they had dismounted the MRAP the four of them had instantly, instinctively moved in different directions. It had never occurred to any of them to stand together, to present a united front. Alice wondered if that might be the test: knit the queens into a single entity. Bind them together as her family was bound.

Edward turned to Alice and nodded, granting her some precious confirmation. "He's been training the prisoners also, just in a different way. They'll want to attack humanity's technology now. Before they didn't even notice."

Alice pondered Owen with fresh appreciation. "I can see the future," she said. "But you took the future and shifted it into the present."

"Where I can deal with it," Owen agreed. "Or, I should say, where you can deal with it."

"We're not ready to fight a war," Alice objected.

"Neither are they," Owen replied. "Would you rather wait fifty years till your enemies are organized? They're a motley crew right now."

_So are we_, Alice thought. But that was the point, of course. If she could unite the Four Queens into a genuine team, they would dominate the earth. How could she do that, though? Alice had bought into Owen's mission, but she was the only one. If she could get them to care about the future, it would be so easy. But what if she _couldn't_ get them to care? Could she bind Bella and Lucy and Jane anyway? Bind them so tight that the total became greater than the sum of the parts?

Alice had no Chelsea to enforce loyalty. Owen didn't want Alice creating that kind of loyalty, however, and neither did Alice. They had to _choose_ to follow Alice.

What motivated each woman? Lucy was the easiest to figure out. The shadow-feeder just plain loved Owen. How any creature could love the man was beyond Alice, but it was what it was. If Alice could get Owen to fall in love with Lucy, the shadow-feeder would follow Alice anywhere.

Bella loved Edward. Was that the key to getting Bella on board? Yet Alice wondered if Bella really loved Edward, or if she was actually in love with the _idea_ of Edward. Did Bella's heart swell with romantic love – or did it swell with a love of romance? Regardless, the key to getting Bella to join was to make the whole enterprise romantic.

Jane was the toughest nut to crack. What did Jane want? A sense of identity according to Owen, but Alice had no idea what that even meant. As far as Alice was concerned, Jane just wanted to kill people, Cullens most especially. Was that one reason Owen had brought them here? Was Jane also being tested?

Except that wasn't quite it. Perhaps part of the test was that _Alice_ was supposed to put _all four of them_ to the test. Pass the test to deserve bonding. Get bonded together by passing the test. Create a test. A test through which they would devote themselves to Alice out of their own free will.

Edward spoke up. "He doesn't want us to settle for being a family or a school or a even military unit. It's not a coven he wants, but a country. He wants us to found a nation." He turned toward his father. "With Carlisle as our leader."

"It is not in our nature to work together or live together," Bella objected.

"Because it's not in _human_ nature," Owen agreed. "Isn't that what you said, Mrs. Cullen? That vampires are just humanity magnified? We have to force ourselves to work together. It's not easy, but we do it. Just because it'll be even harder for you doesn't mean you shouldn't learn to do it anyway. You covenant into a body politic for the common good, sacrificing some individual freedoms in the process because it's the right thing to do. Because you _have_ to do it, not because you want to do it. It's part of being an adult, Mrs. Cullen. And you vampires so desperately need to grow up."

Alice knew Edward had done enough mind reading when the first vision hit her. She watched an artificial sun consume the eleven of them, but that wasn't the worst part. The escaped prisoners began to organize, plot, plan. Eventually they brought upon humanity the very war Owen was so desperate to prevent. The modern world was destroyed.

Edward could see Alice's vision, of course. Based upon his expression he found the future as sickening as she did. Whatever action he had been considering – killing Owen and Jane, most likely – he knew it was not an option.

_A test for all four of us_, Alice thought, willing Edward to listen, _the passing of which will bind us, make these women follow me, knit us into a team capable of saving both humans and vampires from mutual destruction. That is our way out of this mess._

Romance for Bella. Love for Lucy. But what about Jane? What could Alice do to get Jane to commit? Jane had demonstrated the most enthusiasm for Owen's project, but a lot of that was simply because she enjoyed the training so much. Their master was the true anti-Aro, valuing Jane as a real person, treating her as a real person, accepting her for who she was. That was likely the path to Jane's loyalty: Alice had to become an anti-Aro.

The idea came to Alice then, so powerful and clear that Edward staggered backwards. Edward utterly rejected the notion, and started devising plans of his own. This resulted in wave upon clairvoyant wave pummeling Alice's mind. She gave her gift free reign, allowed Edward to see how every choice led to the same inexorable outcome: a hellish dark age devoid of science or technology, with mankind enslaved and reduced to fodder for an aristocracy of grinning, castle-bound monsters.

Edward shook his head, resisting the inevitable. Alice could tell he was close to losing it, that in his rage he might simply rip Owen apart. And really, it was all Owen's fault. Or at least it was his fault that they were being forced to deal with this issue now rather than in fifty years. But Owen had had his way. He had set such things in motion that there was no stopping them. Unless the Four Queens became the pantheon Owen demanded.

"Look at me," Edward said to Bella. "I've got to do something now. Something dangerous. It's a risk I _have_ to take, though. For our future."

Alice began moving toward them. Bella was too fixed on Edward's agony to notice.

"Whatever it is, don't do it," Bella protested. "We can find another way. We always find another way."

"I think this will work," Edward pressed. "But if it doesn't, this may be the last time I hold you. So please do it, Bella. Hold me."

Edward and Bella embraced. Alice slid into position.

"I love you, Bella," Edward affirmed.

"I love…" Bella began, but never finished. Alice sank her teeth in Bella's neck, ripped her sister's head off, and let it fall with a heavy thud in the dirt.

* * *

Up to this point Jane had remained thoroughly distracted by the "special object's" detonation codes. Owen really had given her the ability to ruin everything. Jane had never imagined being entrusted with such power, and the reality of it had quite gone to her head.

But when Bella's was torn from her torso, Jane's focus returned in a hurry. The Cullens cried out in confusion and anger, of course, even as Edward lowered his wife's body gently to the ground. Jane had to admit, however, that she had never been so impressed by the Cullens' self-control. They turned aggressive and hostile toward Alice, but they didn't attack her. Despite the certainty that Edward had known what Alice was about to do, and that he had even assisted in doing it, every other coven on earth would have instantly ripped Alice to pieces.

"It was the only way," Edward kept saying, over and over again. "It was the only way." He rose from the ground and disappeared inside the house.

"We could have talked it over," Carlisle protested. "We _should_ have talked it over."

"No," Alice insisted. "Bella couldn't know it was coming."

"But if she knew this was really necessary for saving her family, Bella would have agreed to it," Carlisle maintained.

"Exactly," Alice continued, "but it's killing her _without_ her knowledge or assent that turns the romance into horror."

Jane wasn't sure what to think. She rejoiced that Bella was dead, yet it infuriated her that she had not made the kill herself. She also had absolutely no idea why Alice would do such a thing.

Jane's confusion only grew worse when Edward stomped back outside with a silver platter, which he proceeded to throw at Alice's feet. Alice placed Bella's head on the platter, lifted it gently, and began walking toward Jane.

It took Jane several moments to realize that the head of Isabella Swan was actually being offered to her. _For me_, Jane thought. _Alice killed her for me!_ Jane received the precious present slowly, carefully, indifferent to the weeping that surrounded her. _Bella's head. It's mine!_

Possibilities rushed through Jane's mind. She shouldn't burn it right away. Kick it and throw it for a few weeks first, then mount it on a pike. That was the way to go. Jane grabbed Bella's hair and discarded the platter. She didn't think she'd ever been so happy.

How long she stood like that, gazing into Bella's lifeless eyes, Jane didn't know. Eventually she became aware of the fact that everyone remained motionless, staring, waiting.

"Why?" Jane asked.

Alice said nothing. Edward said nothing. Jane looked to Owen, but he remained impassive. Jane glanced from face to face again, realized she was supposed to figure it out for herself.

Why would Alice kill her sister? Why would Edward help? Their gifts had to have something to do with it, of course. Alice had seen a vision, Edward had read her mind. For some reason ripping Bella's head off had become their only option. But how could that be? What future benefit could possibly accrue from the insufferable girl's death?

The answer hit Jane like a punch in the stomach. "You've got to be _kidding_ me," she swore. "No way. No _way_."

Alice took a few steps in her direction. "It's up to you, Jane. All of it. Everything. The future of vampires. The future of the human race. It's not Bella you're holding. It's the world. It's life. It's everything."

Jane considered the special object tucked away on the MRAP. So much power to kill. That was who Jane was: a killer. There was nothing new about holding the lives of others in her hands. But the power to save? To protect? How could they trust her with so much? Why had they put their fate in her hands?

Jane studied the dead head and, despite herself, smiled. _Alice loves me_, she thought. No, that wasn't it. Something better than love. _Alice respects me._

She raised the head in front of her and shoved it in their faces. "I'm still a sadist," she declared. "You can't change that. I won't change that."

"I know," Alice said. "I'm not asking you to change what you are. I'm just asking you to change what you do."

Jane walked over to Bella's body, hunched down beside her. "Blood," she demanded.

Owen approached, pulled a knife from his pocket, cut his thumb. Blood began dripping on the ground, making Jane's mouth fill with venom. She began licking the base of Bella's neck, coating the torn surface. Then she pressed the head into place.

At first it seemed like nothing was happening, but Jane knew what she was doing and remained motionless. Eventually she felt movement: tissues and bones reconnecting, venom stirring, lips twitching. Bella's eyes shot open, and the first thing she saw was Jane hovering over her.

The restored vampire sprang from the ground, enraged, thirsty, murderous. Jasper and Emmett restrained her. Alice got in her face.

"_I_ was the one who killed you," Alice insisted. "Look at me. _I_ did it, Bella. I bit your head off. I bit your head off, and I gave it to Jane on a platter, just like she wanted. And _she_ chose to bring you back. She did bring you back."

Bella glanced about, confused, uncertain, thoroughly pissed. For a long time she stared at Jane in wonder, trying to process the impossible: the former captain of the Volturi guard had just saved her life. "Thank you," Bella said.

Her brothers released her, and Bella ran into Edward's arms. She remained there for several minutes, comforting and being comforted. Then without warning she leaped away from her husband, bowled Owen over, and bit him in the throat.

* * *

**Postscript**

_The Four Queens_ (Part 1 of _The Harrowing_) is finished. The novel is now on official hiatus. Since it is unlikely I will be able to write more of it for some time, I'm labeling the story complete. The impending heroics of the Four Queens I must leave to your imagination, at least for now.

Chapter 11 title "The Killer in Me" is based on the song Disarm by The Smashing Pumpkins. Chapter 12 title "The Kill" is based on a song of the same name by 30 Seconds to Mars. The lyrics of both songs are quite meaningful, and relate well to the themes of the final two chapters.

Critics of the _Twilight_ series commonly label Bella a _cipher_.

**Cipher** (cypher) – a person or thing of no value or importance; a non-entity.

What critics are asserting is that Bella (along with the story's other main characters) is so superficial that she isn't even really a character at all. She's just a stuffed shirt, a placeholder, an empty shell into which the reader can substitute herself. And the _reason_ the reader can replace Bella with herself so easily is because there's nothing "there" for the reader to displace – Bella has no substance of her own to get in the way.

I do not believe the critics are correct. Bella and Edward may not be the deepest fictional characters of our generation, but it is too much to call them ciphers. Even if Bella does start out as something of a Mary Sue, her choices repeatedly drive the plot in book after book. Plus she displays a dark attraction to the vampire world, combined with a curious indifference to the feeding activities of her vampire "friends." Perhaps this makes Bella callous. It hardly makes her shallow.

The irony, however, is that many _Twilight_ fans try to turn Bella _into_ a cipher. I think this is where a lot of criticism of the series actually comes from. It's not criticism of the characters, per se, so much as criticism of what fans _do_ with the characters. In fanfic after fanfic, whatever depth does exist in Bella and Edward gets stripped out or ignored, replaced with ditzy, grunting bodies interested in nothing but phones, fashion, and fornication. If anything, then, _Twilight_ must submit to this criticism: the characters aren't ciphers, but they _are_ shallow enough that fans can turn them _into_ ciphers. If this gutting/emptying/hollowing/vacuuming of Bella and Edward upsets Meyer, she is smart enough to keep her displeasure to herself.

The _Twilight_ characters possess _some_ depth. A fanfic author can go in more than one direction with this. She can eliminate what substance is there, and remake the whole _Twilight_ world into a mindless, meaningless pulp romance. The fanfic author can also go in the opposite direction. She can seize upon what deep places do exist in the characters, and see how deep those places go. If one discovers the worst – that a character has no real depth – is that character at least _capable_ of becoming deep? Can she change, grow, expand, _something_? Such change is what a great story is all about.

In searching for deep places in Jane and Alice (and Bella, too), what I'm really doing is searching for deep places in the _Twilight_ fan base. I think there's more to _Twilight_ fans than their critics give them credit for, and I'm giving them a chance to prove it.

The literary snobs would call it a fool's errand, of course, and I get that: I teach classical literature, after all. But what the elitists fail to acknowledge is that Stephanie Meyer has accomplished what few others have: _she has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to write._ This is a remarkable achievement, one that every committed English teacher would love to duplicate. Think about it. No one is forcing fanfic authors to write. These aren't assignments due by the end of the week. Meyer's fans are writing _because she has awakened within them a yearning to write._

The critics can say what they like. As far as I'm concerned, no one is shallow who feels that longing, that urge, that _need_ to tell a story – and then uses her own free time to act upon it.

Lee Kyle

March 27, 2013


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